Testimony

by Scott Turow

  But inside, Kajevic’s standard-issue cell surprised me, since it was far nicer than the quarters of minimum-security prisoners in the US, who are usually housed in barracks. Even as a prosecutor, I was never in the school of those who compared federal prisons to ‘country clubs.’ The worst thing about prison was that it was prison: You couldn’t leave, you were isolated from loved ones, and you submitted 24/7 to a regime of rules you’d never choose on your own. The additional incidents of American prison life in some institutions—the cramped double cells, the fetid air, the well-founded anxieties about beatings and sexual assaults—were punishments far beyond those provided by law. I always wanted anybody who complained about ‘coddled criminals’ to spend a day behind bars.

  But with all that said, the prisoners of the ICC and the Yugoslav Tribunal who were housed in the detention center lived in more favorable conditions than a large portion of the people on the planet. The cell to which we were admitted was perhaps ten feet wide but nicely appointed with laminate cabinetry, an actual bed—rather than the steel shelf on which American prisoners typically sleep—a desk and chair, and a small TV. Truth told, when I’d been on the road, I had paid for motel rooms less inviting. The detention center also offered a tidy little library; a spiritual space, replete with Orthodox icons and even flowers; an educational room, where classes were taught and prisoners enjoyed access to computers; and a gym big enough for full-court basketball or tennis.

  Kajevic and Bozic had elected to conduct the interview in Kajevic’s cell rather than the visitor center, where prisoners received their families and others. They wanted to minimize any chance that other inmates would spread the rumor that Kajevic had turned informant. Coming to Kajevic’s quarters also meant we could be evicted whenever they chose, and therefore gave Kajevic the small psychological edge of seeing us on his own turf.

  Even taller than I recalled, Kajevic rose formally to shake our hands when Goos and I were admitted. The grand way he swept his hand toward the chairs set aside for us left me with a clear impression of the kind of expansive host he would have been in his presidential residence.

  Kajevic took a seat at his desk, beside Bozic and a young male assistant making notes. Goos and I were given metal armchairs just inside the door, a few feet from the sink and the toilet. The uniformed guard who’d escorted us positioned himself discreetly in a corner and managed an unrelenting expression of abject indifference to whatever we said.

  Bozic made a brief prefatory statement, repeating our agreement and emphasizing that he could end the questioning or decline answers whenever he or his client preferred. He also added, “As a matter of courtesy, I ask that you address my client as President Kajevic.”

  I replied with a preamble of my own, stating that our promises were made only on behalf of our Court, to ensure that the interview had no impact on the charges at the Yugoslav Tribunal. Then I looked to the yellow pad in my lap, where I’d sketched out the areas we needed to explore. I knew what good manners suggested, but I couldn’t stomach any thank-yous, even though Kajevic was here voluntarily.

  “We wish to ask you questions, Mr. Kajevic—President Kajevic—about events in the first half of 2004, especially what you know about the disappearance of four hundred persons from a refugee camp at a place in Bosnia commonly known as Barupra. We also want to explore the relationship those events might have had to a firefight between your forces and NATO troops in April of that year. Do you understand, sir?”

  “I do.” His English was excellent. I expected as much, since it had been on display during his appearances at the UN and then in Dayton. He was reputedly fluent in seven different languages, but with Kajevic you could never be certain what was truth or puffery. “I have agreed to answer your questions, because I was curious to meet the two of you, Mr. Ten Boom, and because I am innocent of any role in this supposed massacre. I will tell you that now. And by saying that, I do not wish to imply that I am guilty of any other crimes, especially the supposed war crimes with which I am charged.”

  “I understand your position,” I said.

  “I doubt you do,” said Kajevic, with a quick smile that wavered between ingratiating and smug. “You might as well say that war itself is a crime.” He looked well, calm, even content, although that might have been because he was the star of the show, a role he inevitably enjoyed. He was already somewhat less paunchy than he’d appeared running in his cassock through the streets of Madovic. Nara had told me he hadn’t been eating, not as a protest of his confinement, but because he found Dutch cooking repugnant compared to the excellent cuisine of Bosnia. In the short-sleeved navy-blue jumpsuit of the jail, he seemed quite fit for a man in his early sixties, squared at the shoulder and strong through the chest. The beard under which he had hidden had been shaved, giving his face a fish-belly paleness, but he was on the way to reestablishing the monumental hairdo he’d sacrificed to remain on the loose. Darker roots had grown out below the white dye, so that at first glance he looked like he was wearing a headband. His nose might still have been a bit swollen and displayed a red lump, the size of a knuckle, near the bridge.

  “In many instances, President Kajevic, wars are indeed crimes.”

  “On the contrary. Violent struggle is part of human nature—and evolution, frankly, Mr. Ten Boom. One tribe is smiting another tribe on virtually every page of the Old Testament. It is natural for people to want to protect their kind and see them survive. Name an epoch when there has not been war. It is part of the human condition because it breeds strength in men and is nature’s way.”

  Kajevic’s arrogance felt far advanced beyond the routine self-satisfaction of many middle-aged males. He believed he was Nietzsche’s Übermensch, to whom no ordinary rules applied. He practiced law, and scrivened books of poetry I’d read a bit of, ridiculous soppy stuff that would have embarrassed any self-respecting teenager. He extolled his wife and fucked every girl he could talk into lying down. He burbled in public when he spoke about his beloved children, but was famous for publicly flogging his sons. Within his ravenous black eyes there was a Rasputin gleam, but even after a few minutes in his presence, you had to grant him his own premise about himself: He was an extraordinary fellow. Listening to him rattle on about war, I wondered instantly how Layton Merriwell would respond.

  “The notion of war crimes is absurd, Mr. Ten Boom. Four hundred Gypsies are massacred and that is a war crime? How often were four hundred Serbs killed? My wife and children have existed under constant surveillance for twenty years, followed, watched through binoculars and lasers at all hours, their phones tapped. Even the sewage was inspected at one point for DNA. Believing I was inside, the Nazis of NATO blew the door off a small house and killed two children and maimed a third. But none of that is a war crime.”

  I had resolved beforehand not to get drawn into debates with him. But his self-justifying crap was impossible to tolerate in silence.

  “And Srebrenica?” I asked. “Over a few days, more than eight thousand unarmed Muslim men and boys were gunned down one by one, President Kajevic.”

  Bozic now raised a hand to forbid an answer, and Kajevic responded despite him.

  “I was not there, Mr. Ten Boom. And your version of what happened is nothing like what I have heard. But even pretending what you say is true, how were these Bosniaks unarmed? Most were captured as part of a military column. And if released, the next day they would have taken up guns and resumed slaughtering Christians. You know the saying, Mr. Ten Boom, that history is made by the victors? Do you?”

  “Yes,” I finally answered.

  “So is justice. How many of the war criminals your Court prosecutes were the winners in the wars they were fighting? The Protestant West, the Americans, call me a criminal so I am a criminal. That is a matter of power, not justice. The only true war crime is losing.”

  “We will prosecute Americans, if that is your point, Mr. Kajevic.”

  “No you will not,” he answered. “And if you truly believe that, you ar
e quite dim.”

  He was smart. I had been prepared for that. And not without his point.

  “Let us talk about Barupra, President Kajevic.” Beside his client, Bozic nodded sagely.

  Kajevic again denied that he, or those he commanded, had any role in annihilating the people of Barupra, adding, with his inescapable air of superiority, “I would not be here, were there any basis to believe that.”

  That answer begged a question that had gotten quite a bit of airtime in the prosecutorial councils at the Court in the last week. Why in the world was Kajevic sitting for questions? Leaving aside his curiosity about the men who’d inadvertently spearheaded his arrest, it seemed inevitable that he wanted to blame the Americans, whom he despised for intervening in a war he was sure he was about to win.

  “And do you have any information, either direct observation or what you have been told, about what might have become of those people at Barupra?”

  “I heard rumors,” he said.

  “And when did you hear those rumors?”

  “Several weeks after. May, even June of 2004.”

  “And what were the rumors?”

  “That the Americans had come in the dead of night, set off explosives, and the Roma were gone.”

  “Did you ever talk to anyone who claimed to have been present or in the vicinity when that happened?”

  He turned his head several times, meaning no. “I don’t believe so. I was far away by the end of April.”

  “Where were you?”

  Bozic immediately waved a hand. Kajevic again answered despite his lawyer.

  “I was nowhere near Tuzla, Mr. Ten Boom, where the Americans were searching for me in every attic and cellar, every culvert and sewer.”

  “And what did you make of those rumors about the Roma? Did they seem credible?”

  “Of course. The Americans believe they are invincible. And so they were full of rage that a so-called war criminal had succeeded in killing and wounding so many of them.”

  “But why blame the Roma of Barupra?”

  “Because they had provided the weapons we used in our defense.” Kajevic angled his face to look at us, calm and supreme. “Surely after all your investigating, you knew that?”

  When I did not respond, Kajevic beamed. He had remarkably good teeth, straight and white, for a man who had come of age with Tito-era dentistry. Beside me, Goos had stopped tapping away on his laptop. We’d had the Eureka we came hoping for: The Roma had provided the arms Kajevic used to shoot the Americans.

  “No, of course, you don’t know that,” said Kajevic. “Because the Americans want to hide the fact that they were killed and wounded with weapons stolen from under their noses. It makes them look pathetic and inept.” Kajevic uttered a hearty stage laugh, then tapped Bozic with the back of his hand. He remarked to Bozic in Serbo-Croatian. I looked discreetly at Goos’s pad, where he had written the translation, much as I would have guessed: ‘I told you so.’

  “You understand,” Kajevic said, “that the Americans and NATO stripped us of weapons whenever they could during their occupation. Old men were beaten and deprived of their shotguns or the sidearms they had used in World War II. The NATO force left us toothless, while the Bosniaks built immense armories for the next war. Altogether, in the years after Dayton, NATO collected eight hundred fifty thousand small arms. Did you know that?”

  I nodded.

  “Then perhaps you know what happened to those weapons?”

  “I’m sure you can tell me.”

  “No, I cannot,” he answered. “Only a small portion. Here is what I know. Late in the winter of 2004, the American general, Layton Merriwell, the NATO supreme commander, decided he could accomplish two goals at once by transporting most of these weapons out of Bosnia. About 500,000 light arms and munitions. Do you know where he sent them?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Iraq?” Goos asked.

  “Of course, Iraq,” said Kajevic. “To equip the police and defense forces, all the Sunnis the Americans had disarmed the year before. Everyone who had served in the Iraqi Army was familiar only with Soviet-type small arms, like these. So General Merriwell went about collecting weapons from all over Bosnia to ship to Iraq. Brilliant, yes?”

  He was being sardonic. But it was actually a wise plan—get the guns out of Bosnia, where sooner or later they would have gone astray and been employed to disrupt the peace, while saving taxpayers the expense of arming and training the Iraqi forces with American equipment. It sounded like the combination of tactical and political genius that was part of Merriwell’s legend.

  “And what became of that plan?”

  “You should ask your countrymen. I am told they grow very silent when that question is raised. Surely I don’t know the answer. Except of course about six trucks full of light arms. That was stolen by the Gypsies.”

  Attila and I by now had spoken several times about the Gypsies stealing her convoy. What she’d failed to mention every time was that the trucks were full of weapons. That, apparently, was the big classified secret, although the goal, at least as Kajevic told the story, seemed to be avoiding embarrassment rather than promoting national security.

  At first blush, I was inclined to blame Attila for leading me to believe that trucks were the only equipment the Roma had sold to Kajevic. Merriwell, too, had left me with that impression. I would have to review things carefully later, but after a second, I suspected that if I’d had a tape recording I’d find that both Merry and Attila simply had not corrected my errant deductions.

  “And by ‘Gypsies,’ you mean the Roma from Barupra?”

  “Who else? It is characteristic of the Americans’ moral arrogance that they disregarded all warnings about employing Gypsies. And suffered the loss of their vehicles and weapons as a result.”

  “And you bought both? Trucks and guns?”

  “Two trucks. Ammunition. One hundred assault rifles and other light arms.”

  “Grenade launchers?”

  “Yes, yes. Those. Mortars. The armaments that proved so lethal to the Americans as we fired down from the adjoining buildings.” He was trying to be stone-faced and factual, but a mean-spirited smile was tempting his lips.

  “You didn’t have weapons already?”

  “Unfortunately, we had departed in haste from our prior refuge, making it impossible to travel armed. Once we were settled in Doboj, we needed to resupply.”

  “And how did you find the Roma to buy this materiel?”

  “My nephew was in charge of this resupply effort. Do you have nephews, Mr. Ten Boom?”

  “I do.”

  “And what kind of men are they?”

  “Very fine. Very different. One is a medical student, the other works as a juggler and teacher. But they are both outstanding young men. My sister’s sons.”

  “My nephew is not an outstanding young man. Also my sister’s son. But he is an idiot. Yet he is my nephew.” Kajevic shrugged, with the same hapless gesture most adults on earth had employed now and then in talking about certain family members. “And very loyal. He is a drug addict who claims he is cured, despite weekly relapses. But he mixes well in low elements. He bought these guns. And was very proud of himself.”

  “He dealt with the Roma?”

  “Ah yes. Face-to-face apparently. I knew nothing about this in advance. I had no choice but to beat him once he told me the story.” Kajevic added that fact with utter serenity. Violence, as he’d said, was part of nature.

  “And why were you displeased?”

  “Because he had dealt with Gypsies. Gypsies care only about Gypsies. It is untrue that they have no sense of honor. But it is limited to Gypsies.”

  “Had he told the Gypsies whom the weapons were for?”

  “He claimed not. But his uncle is all my nephew has with which to impress. Girls in bars. Whoever. He has been cautioned a dozen times but is incorrigible. And even what he admitted saying was too much—how his important uncle would enjoy the fact that the wea
pons had been stolen from the Americans. Who else around Tuzla or Doboj would that apply to? The Gypsies are very clever. And my nephew all but gave them our precise whereabouts to deliver the goods. They would have been fools not to follow him back the few blocks. And because they are Gypsies, they would think nothing of selling weapons to us on one hand and then, on the other hand, selling information about our location to the Americans.”

  “So that’s how you knew the Americans would be coming for you? Surmise?”

  “More than surmise. Expectation. Based on certainty about the Gypsies, Mr. Ten Boom. We knew they’d betray us and that NATO would arrive. When was not clear. If we moved, we might have fallen into the Americans’ snares. So we prepared. And remained hidden. I had people to watch for me all over Bosnia. You have learned that.” Face averted, he again delivered a superior look of considerable satisfaction. “I had them on alert, and so learned that NATO was on the way an hour or so in advance.”

  I’d asked dozens of times how Kajevic had been so ready for the Americans, but no guess, not mine or anyone else’s, had been entirely accurate. As a prosecutor and defense lawyer, I’d always loved the moment when the defendant finally opened up. Even the most exacting reconstruction of events before that turned out to have missed something.

  “And how did the Americans know that their troops were shot with guns stolen from them?”

  “Unfortunately, Americans were not the only persons to die in that incident. We left our dead and their weapons behind as we were escaping, and could remember our comrades only in our prayers. The Americans always recorded the serial numbers of the weapons they confiscated and usually put laser engravings on the components.” Kajevic smiled again in his disturbing way. “This is very amusing to me, your questions,” he said, “the degree to which the Americans have kept you in the dark.”

  As I would have expected, Kajevic was a genius at spotting vulnerabilities. Despite supposedly ruing his dead, he had probably been supremely satisfied to leave a few assault rifles behind to complete the Americans’ disgrace. It was not hard to imagine the combination of indignation, sorrow, and rage the US forces had felt, assessing the magnitude of Kajevic’s triumph.