by Alen Mattich
“So . . . ?” Strumbić asked.
“I’m thinking. I don’t suppose you’d be wanting to answer any questions?”
“Sure, why not?”
“And incriminate yourself?”
“Incriminate? You’re starting to sound like a lawyer, Gringo. Trust me, this is not a case that’s going to court.”
Della Torre knew he had a point. Strumbić’s cash had pull with prosecutors and judges and plenty of his bosses besides. What’s more, if he brought Strumbić in, della Torre would also have to explain his little document-selling sideline. Bad as it might be for Strumbić to have been buying the files, it would have been worse for della Torre. Yugoslav courts took a dim view of UDBA agents selling secrets, especially when they included foreign bank records of leading prosecutors. Or surveillance photographs of minor politicians snorting drugs. Or judges in bed with their mistresses.
“It’s not just about the files, Julius. It’s about those men you hired to kill me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You set me up to have those Bosnian hicks kill me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I merely facilitated them offering you a ride. Which is all they said they wanted to do with you.”
“That doesn’t wash,” della Torre said.
“Calm down. What are you going to do? Shoot me? You’re not the kind,” Strumbić said, giving della Torre his Cheshire cat’s grin. He was a cool one.
“Julius, who were those guys?”
“How the hell do I know? Farmers who think they’re Elvis.”
“You’re the one who sent them to pick me up, to bring me here. Remember?”
Strumbić shrugged.
Della Torre had been finishing a bite of supper in his narrow kitchen when the phone rang. He was on his last cigarette. Somewhere, he had a packet left from the stack of imported cartons he’d bought off a friend coming back from Austria, but hadn’t been able to find it. It’ll be back to the local lung-rot tomorrow.
“Hey, Gringo, it’s Julius.” The only people who called him Marko were his family and his ex-wife. Otherwise it was della Torre or Gringo, a nickname he’d always loathed but couldn’t shed.
“Yes?” Della Torre was wary on the phone.
Life in Communist Yugoslavia was full of awkward compromises and hedged conversations. Especially when someone else could be listening in.
“Listen, Gringo, I’ve got a job that might interest you. It shouldn’t take much time. And I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’m listening.”
“Not really something I can talk to you about over the phone, if you know what I mean,” Strumbić had said.
“When do you want to meet up, then?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ve sent round a couple of boys to pick you up. They’ll bring you over to my weekend house. We can discuss it here.”
“At this time of evening?”
“Like I said, I’ll make it worth your while. We’ll be able to finish up tonight, and there’s the small matter of four thousand Deutschmarks.” He was being indiscreet, but the bait worked.
Della Torre whistled.
“Nice, eh? Only I need you here. I sent the boys off already; they’ll arrive to pick you up in half an hour, tops.” Strumbić wasn’t asking any longer. He was telling.
“Your people?”
“Cops, you mean?” asked Strumbić.
“Yes.”
“No. These guys are just muscle, they don’t have anything to do with anyone. Best that way.”
“Muscle? What do we need muscle for?” The only extracurricular work that interested Della Torre was trading information.
“We don’t. They happen to be around. I’m using them for some other stuff. And right now I’m using them to get you here.”
“A delivery service.”
“Something like that. I told them to buzz and you’ll be down straight away. Don’t disappoint me.”
“Do I need to bring anything?”
“No, just your happy, smiling face,” Strumbić said. “I’ll see you in around an hour and a half and they’ll bring you back home before midnight, so you don’t have to worry about turning into a pumpkin. I promise.”
Those alarm bells that people living in Communist countries spent their lives cultivating, plus the bigger ones lawyers and secret policemen got with their diplomas and their badges, should have been sounding for della Torre — if they hadn’t been muffled by money.
“YOU WEREN’T REALLY expecting me to come back here, were you?” della Torre asked. “That’s why you looked surprised when you saw me. What’d you think? That those guys would take me to Belgrade, where somebody would rip my toenails out or break my knees? Or did you think they’d just pop me one on the street when I came down?”
“Gringo, you take these things too personally. How the hell do I know what they wanted to do with you?”
“Maybe because you set me up.”
“I didn’t set you up. What happened was these guys wanted to talk to you and I . . . I arranged an introduction. That’s it.”
“Is that why you were sitting here with a gun on your lap? You knew they’d be back for you.”
“Thought crossed my mind.”
“D’you really think you’d be able to fight them off with that?” Della Torre pointed at Strumbić’s handgun with the toe of his shoe.
“Gringo —”
“Julius, please just answer my questions.”
“Okay. Look, I thought they might be a little crooked so I was playing it safe. It’s one of my failings. To be suspicious. So I figured if they came back I might take a little walk in the woods and then call some of my colleagues from the village.”
It wouldn’t have taken Strumbić long to disappear in the forest. He could have made it to the village on the valley floor in a quarter of an hour with the aid of a small flashlight. Any stranger following him ran the risk of missing the path and falling into one of the hill’s steep gullies, breaking a leg or a neck.
“So you’d have had the terrorist squad bottle them up here on the hill and then pick them off.”
“You’ve got to have contingencies,” Strumbić said apologetically.
“Nice. You’d figured out how to double-cross them just as they were double-crossing you.”
“Only if they came back to bother me.” Strumbić shrugged. “It came to me that those Bosnian boys might have wanted to tidy things up a little. It’d have saved them some money, and what could be neater than making it look like you and I had shot each other? I mean, if that’s what they were looking to do. Which I doubt. Like I say, I’m sure they only wanted to talk to you. But if they didn’t, well, Zagreb cops and the UDBA have never been the best of friends.” He paused, giving della Torre a cringe-making smile. “Us excepted.”
“Makes me well up to think of what a good friend you’ve been,” della Torre said, deadpan. “So why’d you do it?”
Strumbić looked pained.
“Why’d you set me up? What was in it for you?” della Torre pressed.
“Why do you think I did it? To gain personal advantage? Why do you always think the worst of people?” Strumbić said, his expression showing deep hurt.
“Because that’s what you’re like, Julius. How much did you sell me for?”
“Gringo, really, it was never about the money. I swear on my grandmother’s grave.”
“Your grandmother was alive last I heard, and if I remember right you don’t care much for her. How much?”
“I can honestly say that I did not do it for money. I did it because I had no choice. It was me or you. Probably would have been both me and you. I figured this way at least one of us would have been okay. Just by accident that happened to be me.”
“Spill.”
“The money was incidental.”
“Julius, will you just give me a straight answer before I decide to shoot you out of frustration and malice?”
“Fifteen thou, give or take.”
“Dinars?” Della Torre was puzzled. Like most people he still thought in terms of the old dinars, before they knocked four zeros off the bank notes to pretend the currency wasn’t becoming worthless by the day. Fifteen thousand wouldn’t have bought a loaf of bread. On the other hand, fifteen thousand new ones — well, that was real money. For at least a week or two, anyway.
“Dinars? Who talks dinars these days unless you’re buying a newspaper or a packet of sweets? Deutschmarks.”
Della Torre nodded. That was a decent-sized price on his head. He worked it into dollars — about ten thousand as near as he could make it.
“Who wants to pay fifteen thou to kill me? Put a bum in an old Yugo and they could have run me over for the price of a bottle of booze.”
“Gringo, don’t sell yourself so cheaply. I wouldn’t have taken a penny less. I value you too much.”
“Thanks.”
Della Torre picked up the pack of Strumbić’s Luckys and lit himself another cigarette.
“Help yourself,” Strumbić said. Della Torre ignored him.
“So what happened? Why’d those yokels want me dead? And what I don’t want to hear from you is ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Because your name came up on a list.’”
“Like I’m going to be smart with a man who’s got a gun in his pocket. It is a gun, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s an Italian silk tie.”
“I’ve got a dozen of those. Can’t wear them around the office, though. People start asking where the hell I can afford silk ties from. Which is also why I’ve got to drive that VW of mine around town.” Strumbić, in fact, had two VW Golfs, exactly the same colour blue and with sequential licence plates. One was always hidden in his Zagreb garage so that his neighbours wouldn’t snitch. The amount of effort Strumbić devoted to hiding his wealth kept della Torre entertained.
“Nice Golf. I can’t afford one.”
“Course you can’t. Still, I’d rather get more use out of the Beemer. Now that’s class. Problem is, too many people get jealous when they see you with nice things — cars, watches, girls. Then they start making trouble. And that’s just the wife.” Strumbić laughed at his own joke.
“Julius —”
“Okay. Okay. I know you’re tense; I’m just trying to lighten the atmosphere a little. It’s like this. I’m up here for the weekend minding my own business, and these three Bosnians come driving up in this big brand-new Mercedes with fifteen thousand little storm troopers in an envelope wanting to set up a surprise meeting with you. Who am I to say no?”
“Julius. I’m not playing this game. I’m too tired to play this game. I’m going to shoot you in the kneecaps. First one and then the other if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Fine. That’s fine, Gringo. But let’s just establish the ground rules first.”
“Ground rules? You’re sitting in a chair with a pair of handcuffs behind your back. I’ve got a gun that wants to be used. You’ve just set a bunch of killers on me. What the hell sort of ground rules do you have in mind?” Della Torre was finding it hard to keep control of himself.
“I understand your unhappiness with the situation, Gringo, really.”
“Unhappiness? What the hell —”
“Yelling won’t do either of us any good.”
Della Torre hung his head for a moment, holding it with his right hand.
“Julius —”
“All I want to say is if you want honest answers you have to promise me something.”
“What?” della Torre asked through gritted teeth.
“That at the end of this inquisition you do not seek to exact revenge. That we part company with fond memories of a long friendship, for the most part a mutually advantageous friendship.”
“I’ll tell you what, Julius. If you give me an honest account, I won’t shoot you. I may just lock you in this cellar for a little while, until I can make sure you’re not lying. When the time comes, I will call your wife and get her to get you out.”
“That’s harsh, Gringo. I don’t deserve that.”
“I’m petty that way.”
“Okay. Doesn’t matter anyway. My girlfriend will probably come looking for me first. I hope. But if I’m really lucky I’ll get to wait until the end of the week, when the guy comes to check the vines. He’s got a key. Hey, I’ve got at least four hundred litres of wine and about three pigs hanging off the ceiling. If you bring down a carton of smokes and a loaf of bread from the house, I’ll be all set. There’s some cushions back there for the benches. I’ve had worse beds. I’ve got a couple of westerns down here and the radio. What more could a man want? Be a proper holiday, it will. I’ve been needing some time off.”
Della Torre marvelled at how Strumbić could keep his cool. Yet there was an edge to his insouciance, della Torre could feel it.
“So we’ve got a deal? No revenge?”
“We’ve got a deal, Julius. Now, for the love of God, spill.”
JULIUS STRUMBIĆ WAS supposed to have gone home for lunch on the Wednesday afternoon, but he couldn’t face his wife. The day before, she’d found a packet of condoms in the pocket of his uniform trousers and had given him grief all night.
Mr. and Mrs. Strumbić had no need for them. They’d never been able to conceive, and they’d long since given up trying. So on finding the condoms she’d immediately thought the worst of her husband. He’d been put on the spot. He’d come home too soon after a bottle of wine and wasn’t thinking clearly. He’d told her it was for some undercover work. He should have said they used them to keep their gun barrels dry when working in the field. She’d have understood that.
No, he should have told her the truth. That they belonged to a prostitute. He could have left it at that. Implied he’d arrested her and merely pocketed the rubbers as evidence or something. It wasn’t like he ever used the things.
So he went out for lunch on his own, tired from a long night of being harassed. Even when he went to sleep on the sofa, she followed him to make sure he got an earful. She was there when he woke, sitting and staring with those slitted Slavic eyes that made her look like a wolf, starting up again from the exact point when she’d finally let him fall asleep.
He went to a place around the corner from the railway station. It was one of the few remaining restaurants in this part of town that didn’t just serve meat on a stick. He was halfway through his boiled potatoes and schnitzel, tough grey meat under greasy breadcrumbs, when the two men came in. They ignored the waiter and the empty tables and headed straight for him.
“There’s somebody who’d like a word with you,” said the taller, skinny one. He had a Bosnian accent. The other one was shorter, square-built, once muscular but now with some extra weight on his frame. They both had slicked-back hair and pointy shoes. The look might have been retro, except Strumbić had a feeling their style was a hangover from the first time round. Whoever they were, they looked the sort who made sure the opposition limped off the pitch when they played a friendly game of football.
“He can make an appointment with my booking sergeant. I might be free next month. Of course, if you two were to start sucking each other off in here, I’d make sure you had an interview a lot quicker than that. I’m working vice this month.” He had to put some effort into cutting the veal. Maybe it was just the blunt knife.
“Heh. Hear that, Besim. The man made a joke,” said the skinny one to his companion. He turned back to Strumbić. “You probably don’t understand. This is a friendly invitation. We do unfriendly ones too.” The man smiled as if it cost him money.
Strumbić put his cutlery down and looked at them. They might have been regular hoods. Or they could have belonged to one of the security services. The UDBA often employed criminals, though sometimes it was hard to tell them apart from the secret policemen.
They didn’t show any ID, though that could have meant something or nothing. The secret police didn’t always feel the need to introduce themselves formally. On the other hand, they weren’t dragging him out of bed at three o’clock in the morning, so it probably wasn’t official and might not have been unfriendly.
“I guess you know what the proper channels are if you want a formal conversation.”
“Just a chat. And not with us. There’s somebody else who wants a word with you. It’s not far. It won’t take you long.”
Strumbić thought about it. These guys were too much like hicks to be secret police. But you could never be certain. If it was the security services and he made their lives difficult, they’d just try to kick his ass that much harder with their steel-capped boots. But that depended. The Croatian government might not allow them to kick his ass. On the other hand, if they were coming from Belgrade, they might not be inclined to ask the Croatian government if they could speak with him. After all, there wasn’t a lot of love or co-operation between the federal institutions and the Croatian government these days.
Still, whoever they were, they’d found him. Not that it would have been hard. They could have followed him from the police headquarters. They could have had an informant. This was Yugoslavia, after all. There were always snitches.
Strumbić weighed the probabilities. Criminal or operating on behalf of Belgrade? Maybe it was a setup. No. If it was a setup, they’d have pulled up next to him and bundled a rug over his head and thrown him into the boot. If they didn’t shoot him instead. Or they’d have taped a grenade to his car’s chassis, tying the pin to the wheel so that it went off when he drove away.
Things were uncertain enough in those days that it was worth cultivating friends everywhere. And if these guys weren’t the friendliest, at least they were polite. Who knew what would happen in the coming months. Favours granted now could be called in during more difficult times.