Till Kingdom Come

by Andrej Nikolaidis

  Gacy hid the corpses of his victims under his house. When he ran out of space, he threw them in the nearby river. At his trial, he confessed thirty-three murders. He was sentenced to twenty-one life sentences and twelve death penalties.

  For the next fourteen years the State was scheduled to administer him the lethal injection, Gacy claimed he himself was ‘the thirty-fourth victim’, in other words that he was the victim of a conspiracy to frame him.

  Apart from being a serial killer, J.W. Gacy was a Democratic Party activist.

  With a little luck and more caution, both men could have gone undetected. Two so cunning and capable guys could have achieved a lot if only they had concentrated on politics – if they had killed legally.

  In a world just a bit more twisted and just a little further to the right, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy could both have become American presidential candidates. This hypothesis is not as far-fetched as it might sound.

  A serial killer is a perfect candidate for the presidency of any large country. He is already prepared for what awaits him: the sowing of death. Whoever becomes President of the USA – or Russia or France or Prime Minister of Britain, it makes no difference – goes on to become a killer. It is not usual, as far as we know, for American presidents to cruise their country massacring young women and men before taking their oath of office. And yet, under their command, the armed forces and secret services will kill countless people throughout the world.

  Bundy and Gacy mistreated their captives, just as the presidents’ soldiers would do in Iraq, Guantanamo and CIA concentration camps in Europe. How many Bundys and Gacys are wearing American uniforms today? How many prisons are there where these maniacs torture their victims in the name of the Constitution and the American people?

  A US president must also have a wife, of course.

  Americans are fascinated by serial killers and presidents, and as he was waiting on death row, Ted Bundy received love letters every day from beautiful women, many of whom looked just like his victims – brunettes with long hair parted in the middle. Before he was executed, he chose one of them to be his bride and managed to ensure offspring. Thanks to artificial insemination, the lady bore Ted Bundy’s child. It would have been a shame if those genes had been lost.

  Gacy had an even more dynamic prison life, full of fine art and the proceeds from it. And despite being behind bars, he maintained a romantic involvement with a twice-divorced mother of eight. She used Gacy as a marketing tool and managed to get on several talk shows. ‘John Wayne’ himself took to painting in a big way. He produced self-portraits and pictures of clowns – before his time in jail he used to dress up as a clown at children’s parties.

  His social streak, after all, was why his neighbours couldn’t believe someone as altruistic as Gacy was actually a killer. His paintings fetched prices of up to several hundred thousand dollars, and when the artist died he left behind a substantial endowment. The State was furious at him having acquired wealth through being a serial killer and sued Gacy’s estate to recoup the costs of his fourteen years in prison.

  The State was so furious because it jealously guards its exclusive right to kill with impunity: And even makes a profit from it. So if the State is a repressive, murderous machine, why couldn’t it also be run by a killer – one who knows what the business is about?

  I find that the whole debate about the abolition of the death penalty misses the mark. The nature of the State is not going to change if the State decides to stop frying murderers on the electric chair. Abolishing the death penalty does not do away with the State’s right to kill, as is often misleadingly claimed, because the State will still have the right to wage war and to run secret services with all they death they sow. The State will kill for as long as it exists. And it will kill more, the bigger and more powerful it is.

  But what a terrible, crying shame it was that we never saw a presidential debate between Ted Bundy and Wayne Gacy: their heated exchange on foreign policy or the issue of bringing American troops home from abroad; and both candidates swearing, although they were serial killers, that the life of American citizens was sacred to them. Gacy would probably have flirted with the gay community and had the sympathies of liberal commentators. Ted Bundy, as a Republican, would probably have opposed abortion from a ‘pro-life’ position.

  A perfect crime is not one where all traces are removed, thus making it a mystery even for the cleverest investigator. A true perfect crime is one that is not even recognized as a crime, one that is legalised and becomes an integral part of society, tradition, civilization and politics – such a crime, ultimately, serves as the basis of every State.

  7

  Ten days after the article was published, the phone rang. A warbly female voice announced she was calling from the Ministry of the Interior and advised me that I had the honour of receiving a call from the minister himself: The boss wants to speak to you.

  Minister Mandušić was most cordial. If anyone had listened to a recording of our conversation, they would have concluded we were old acquaintances who had gone through a lot together: Sacksful of shared memories and, even more importantly, shared secrets. I assumed that Mandušić knew a lot about me – this may be a failed state, but the secret services in such states work with particular effectiveness. I also knew a thing or two about him, in a way. The assumption that one knew things about the other was his reason for inviting me to meet him, and it was mine for accepting the invitation.

  Goran drove me to Podgorica. We took the long way, via the Petro­vačka Gora mountain range, because it was a rainy day and Goran thought we had a good chance of meeting the ‘Lady in White’.

  The Lady, people told me, was a spirit that had the habit of waylaying superstitious travellers in the deep of the night, especially when mist and rain turned the winding road into a Gothic mise-en-scène. She didn’t steal souls or make travellers pay a black toll: All she took was a tribute in fear. And fear is cheap and never runs out.

  Goran knew several people who claimed to have seen the Lady. They said she came flying up to the car, clung to the bonnet and pressed her bloody, pockmarked face against the windscreen. However fast they drove and however much they jolted around the curves, they were never able to shake her off the car. When she went, it was because she wanted to. She left behind a trail of blood and pus on the bonnet, which stank for months afterwards and was impossible to clean off.

  “Alright then,’ I said to my friend, who, when he wasn’t drinking with me, spent his free time watching horror films, being the owner of the largest collection of ghost, Gothic and zombie movies in Eastern Europe. “What would you do if we met the Lady?”

  “I’d say: Hey sis, where ya been all this time?”, he shouted. He added that, for him, there was no difference between his Lady and the ‘Lady of Međugorje’. In searching for the ‘Lady in White’, he hoped for the same thing that takes fervent Catholics on pilgrimages to Međugorje in Herzegovina: a miracle to confirm his faith. Of course, even if he doesn’t meet her, he believes – no, he knows – that vampires exist and that everyone who does not obstinately close his eyes to the idea of spirits can see them.

  Passing through the wilds of the Petrovačka Gora range, we were caught unawares not by the Lady but by a police patrol. A dumpy policeman literally came rolling out of the forest and levelled his stop sign at us like Father Karras waved the cross above the body of possessed young Regan.

  “How ya goin’, boys?” he drawled, leaning in the car window. That was overly familiar for my taste. I replied coldly and officially, the way he ought to have addressed us. People like that take it as an insult if you don’t go along with their chumminess. Nothing irritates them more than elementary decency, and it makes their hair stand on end like a wildcat’s. Montenegro is full of characters like that. Here dirty old men you see for the first time in your life ask you, ‘So what are you fucking, boys?’ and reach for their shrivell
ed groin with gusto. And it’s not a rhetorical question: they really do expect you to stop in the middle of the street or on the terrace of a café – wherever you’ve had the misfortune of running into them – and whatever you’ve just been doing or intend to do afterwards, they insist that you scrap your plans and describe your last act of coitus for them in detail.

  The policeman made no bones about being offended. If I had spat in his face it would have caused less affront than me being aloof.

  “Alright, sir. Now, boys –,” he said and chuckled at his own joke, which eluded me, “drive slowly, the boss is expecting you. Come on now, skedaddle,” he added and patted Goran’s car like he might the flanks of a horse.

  “And they say there’s no functioning State here!” Goran sighed and put his foot to the floor.

  Later, when I thought back to that day, I’d understand that it was then that I first noticed a sign of ‘The Hand’. As these things go, the terrible realization did not hit me until afterwards, when it was too late: what if there’s a hand guiding me through life? Not a good hand from above, nothing like that. It was more likely a black hand from below; from the police and intelligence-service underground. Nothing metaphysical or transcendental; no kind of god. But nevertheless, very much real and existing. The hand of some monstrous thing that only just comes into view, too big for me ever to see the whole of it, and large enough to block my view of everything else. In the years that followed, I would come to doubt that anything I did was of my own free will. I would see the volition of that ‘Black Hand’ in my actions and would convince myself of its existence innumerable times. Yes, it was omnipresent, particularly when it seemed there was no one except me. Back then in Goran’s car up in the Petrovačka Gora range, I would doubt that my article was the real reason for the Minister’s call. What if he knows a lot more about me than I thought? What if I don’t know anything about him, especially not what I thought I knew? I asked myself.

  We were in the grips of paranoia when we arrived in Podgorica. Goran was also troubled: what if that policeman had searched us and found the grass? What if the fatso had just been on patrol and a proper police ambush was waiting for us on the road into the city? My friend had decided to combine the pleasant with the useful, as they say, and had brought along a few little packets of Albanian ganja. There were buyers in Podgorica. I was convinced that the police weren’t interested in small-time dealers, when not even the big ones interested them. But dark thoughts about what the minister could want of me whirled like a swarm of flies, whose persistent buzzing left me thinking just one thing: This is not going to end well.

  We arrived at the Ministry of the Interior. A bay was reserved for us in the parking lot at the front. An officer pointed us the way and gave a conspiratorial nod. As we were entering the building, Goran remembered that he still had the grass on him. He admitted this to me in a whisper as we were waiting for security to search us.

  “Perhaps this is the right moment to run out to the car,” I suggested.

  “I forgot to lock the car, d’oh!” he groaned theatrically and smacked his forehead.

  “Don’t worry, it’s in safe hands,” a seven-foot man said, who now introduced himself as Head of Security. “There’s no need for a search, they’re with me,” he added for the police at the entrance.

  The wall of men in blue opened wide before us like the gates of hell.

  We went up the broad, marble stairs to the first floor, where the Minister’s office was.

  “I’m leaving you now. You’re in good hands,” the hulk said.

  The door of the office opened. Red carpet, mahogany-panelled walls, photographs of the Minister’s meetings with foreign statesmen, glass cases of gifts he had been given at those meetings, among them a 1886 Winchester rifle from the director of the CIA. Then the secretary, whose birdlike voice I recognized. She ushered me in to see the minister. Goran waited in the front room, where the secretary promised to bring him coffee and a cold drink.

  The office was filled with massive leather furniture while on the floor lay a three-finger thick Persian rug, as soft as cotton wool, capable of defying gravity, which I couldn’t restrain myself from taking a few steps on, as light as a moonwalk. A Montenegrin flag on a pole in the corner. More mahogany, more showcases with gifts. A small library: The collected works of Marx and Lenin, several editions of the Letters of Petar I Petrović-Njegoš, the Montenegrin prince-bishop, a handful of titles on Russian-Montenegrin friendship, Catherine Albanese’s America: Religions and Religion, a whole shelf of conspiracy-theory books on Freemasons and Illuminati. A desk, a real masterpiece of the furniture of power, dominated the room. It plainly divided the world into the space in front of it and that behind it.

  I cleared my throat discreetly a few times to try and announce my presence. There was no answer. I looked around the room searching for cameras. I thought I saw one above the bookshelves, but it was just a smoke detector.

  Then I heard a toilet flush and the Minister, smelling of soap, emerged from a tract hidden behind the bookshelves.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said in mock surprise. “You caught me at an awkward moment. What can I say –,” eloquent Mandušić continued, “the powerful have to shit too. We are also organic, very much so. Do you know the greatest desire of everyone in power is to escape the terror of nature and to overcome their biological limitations. That’s why those in power hide away in monumental buildings, in temples of marble and steel. That’s why they love monuments, because they don’t decay. And that’s why the photograph is their favourite format, because it freezes time and turns it to stone. If we could command it, time would stop right here in the moment of our greatest triumph and our calm, firm rule. But to rule also means to await the moment when the mob will lynch us. That’s not on the photo; it doesn’t show the next episode with its arrests, public humiliation and perhaps even public execution. There’s just the suspended light and suspended time of the moment before the fall.”

  He threw his left arm over my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go into my study.”

  He led me into a small room with piles of books and files on the floor. As I reclined in the armchair, I surveyed the titles: Melville, Auden, Dostoyevsky, Pound, Hegel, and Benjamin...

  “You know I have a PhD in literature from Zagreb,” he said. “A lot of people wonder why I’ve ended up here, heading the police force. It’s quite simple, actually: Imagine the State as an enormous novel, a text that is continuously evolving and being written. My job, like that of a writer, is to have complete control over all the characters in the story. Who will understand them, with all their desires, hopes and ambitions, if not me? Who else can say what a character will do on the next page if not the writer, if not me? In society, as in a good novel, nothing happens spontaneously. Everything flows from the logic of the story and the nature of the characters. The ideal police officer doesn’t solve crimes that have already happened but prevents future ones. It’s not about interpreting the text but writing it.”

  He took a bottle out of the cabinet – Aberlour single malt, twelve years old.

  “Your favourite, if I’m not mistaken,” he winked. ‘What can you do? People bring bottles. You know what we Montenegrins are like. It’s a nice custom, if you ask me. Ultimately it’s civilized, if we recall that they once used to bring dead animals, or even worse, children... Note the element of progress: It’s better for them to offer a bottle of whisky than an ox’s heart, isn’t it? But now we’re a candidate for joining the European Union, this custom like so many others, will die out. Because it’s corruption, you think? I’m rather an expert on corruption, believe you me, and this is not corruption,’ he declared, raising his glass of whisky.

  “You see, that’s exactly why I’ve called you. Not because of corruption –,” he said through a laugh, “but to do with the European Union.”

  “The accession process ‘is under way’, as they sa
y, and I have to travel to conferences on security in Europe. Speeches are held, as you can imagine. We shepherds come together and talk to each other about the importance of properly supervising the flock.”

  “Now... I’m a proud man; that should come as no surprise. I’m not prepared to read out claptrap at those meetings. I have a horde of advisors, but I use them for just one thing: I ask them for their opinion, and then I do exactly the opposite of what they advise. Unfortunately I don’t have time to devote to those speeches. So now we finally come to you, and I apologize for keeping you in suspense. I’ve been following your pieces for a long time. In fact, you could say I’m a devoted reader of yours. You remind me of myself when I was younger. Your delusions are charming and you argue them elegantly, with extraordinary zeal and conviction. That’s what attracted me to your pieces. Don’t get me wrong: I know very well you’re not right, but still you almost convince me of your positions. That’s a rare talent, and I could make good use of it. So I’m making you an offer. You can give up writing for the papers. Nothing really important is written about in the papers, nor are any problems resolved in newsprint. I’d like you to write for me. Be my ghost-writer. There’s no occupation like that within the system, of course, so you won’t have to come in to work: your workplace will be your own study. If you want to move to Podgorica, we’ll rent a flat for you. If not, we can deal with everything over the phone. There are no secrets here – everything is wiretapped anyway, including this conversation. The pay isn’t great, and government employees aren’t rich, as you know, but it’s certainly more than you earn now. That’s it, that’s all. There are no hidden conditions and no contract you have to sign in blood. It’s a clean, strictly business relationship. What do you think?” he asked as he poured me another whisky.