“A gun? Chris didn’t own a gun. He abhorred them.”
“Krstić didn’t. They were second nature to him.”
Her phone rang. The call was from Khattak. She listened, then turned to Nate. “I’ve got to go. There’s been a break-in at Drayton’s. If you could just try to remember if there’s anything at all about Drayton that seemed strange or would suggest he had something to hide, that would be helpful.”
“I could come with you.”
“It’s more important that we establish a break in Drayton’s cover. He must have slipped up somewhere if he was Dražen Krstić. Think about it and let me know.”
That wasn’t the reason she had asked him to show her the path through the Bluffs. And she didn’t think it was the reason he wanted to accompany her now. In fact, she knew why.
With his writer’s instinct, or whatever it was, he’d recognized a fellow screw-up.
19.
How is it possible that a human being could do something like this, could destroy everything, could kill so many people? Just imagine this youngest boy I had, those little hands of his, how could they be dead? I imagine those hands picking strawberries, reading books, going to school, going on excursions. Every morning I cover my eyes not to look at other children going to school and husbands going to work, holding hands.
Allah knew why this was happening. Only Allah knew. Only Allah could say why He had reached down His divine hand and touched them with the mark of the believers—the mark that cursed them. They had lost everyone else. His father, the brave ammunition courier, killed on the road to Tuzla. His grandfathers deceased from starvation. His uncles, cousins, brothers, and friends—some had stayed in the woods. Some had been executed inside the white house in Srebrenica. Some had been shot point-blank not far from the base at Potočari. Some had been beaten by axes and truncheons, or had their throats slit in the night, during the long wait for deliverance. Some were on trucks and buses that had materialized swiftly from nowhere and just as swiftly disappeared to unknown destinations. He had seen them take the boys from the line that separated the men and women. He knew they would take him, a skinny fourteen, just as they would take Hakija, at ten years old, the baby of their family. They would not say, “These are children, leave them.” They would say, “These are prisoners. We will exchange them.”
But there would be no exchange.
If they could take the baby that was crying from want in the unmerciful heat and shoot him in the head, why would they leave Hakija and himself? They would not. They would call them out as Turks, as balija. They would say, “Fuck your Muslim mothers.” They would make them sing Chetnik songs.
Then they would tie their hands behind their backs, drive them away to a school or warehouse as they had done to others at Vuk Karadžić, and murder them all. They would lie there dead, forgotten, the last men of their family. Their mother would never find their bones. In time, she would forget the shape of their faces.
* * *
The Chetniks were coming.
There were rumors of more than just the Drina Wolves.
Someone had seen Arkan and his Tigers.
He kissed his mother, three times, four, and on the last kiss, he jerked Hakija’s hand away from hers and whispered fiercely, “They are going to kill us. I will take him to the woods. I will find you again at Tuzla.”
His mother had wept, pleaded, begged to take Hakija with her on the bus to Tuzla until she had seen just ahead of her in the line, Mestafa wrenched from his mother’s struggling grasp.
“We need to question him,” the Chetnik said. “He must be screened for war crimes.”
Mestafa, Hakija’s classmate, was eleven.
She let them go. Pressed her last bit of bread into their hands.
“Take this, my Avdi, my prince, the last hope of our family. Come back to me in Tuzla, Allah keep you safe, Allah bless and protect your road.”
They melted away from the line, dodging the Chetniks, dodging the Dutch who were helping them. He saw that not every boy or man had been lucky enough to kiss his mother or wife or daughter farewell. Already, they looked like skeletons to him. He didn’t want to be one of them. He would find his cousins in the woods, find a way to reach the column that had broken out for Tuzla. If he was crafty and careful—and how else had he stayed alive all this time—he and his brother would cross the divide into the free territory where they would be welcomed like heroes. There was food and water in Tuzla. His father’s men were in Tuzla. His mother, Allah keep and protect her from the animals, would be there waiting. And this nightmare would be over.
He tucked Hakija’s hand into his own, placed his other finger on his little brother’s lips.
“No matter what they promise us, we don’t talk now,” he warned him.
Haki had always trusted him. He kissed his mother sweetly and left the line without protest.
Not knowing then that they would be hunted like animals with just as little chance of survival.
* * *
Before, there had been other words. A possibility of hope, of survival. He had heard it on the radio. They would send the airplanes. They would all be saved. The former meaning of all good things would be restored. Green fields no longer a killing ground where men he had known all his life collected their ammunition for this purpose. Animals peacefully at pasture, food fresh and plentiful, water sweet as nectar. And all of it a lie.
They were milling around in circles in the heat.
No one knew the way.
No one had a weapon.
They were trapped on all sides.
“Come down from the hills,” the Chetniks said. “We will give you a ride. We will give you water. Why do you suffer for no reason?”
There was nothing to do, no one to ask. They hadn’t found any member of their family. They didn’t see any of their neighbors. It was just this writhing, dislocated circle of men. Boys, too. Others like himself and Hakija, their eyes desperately searching the faces of their elders. Should they go down? Should they surrender? A man had tried to run and been shot. Lazily. Easily. By a soldier adjusting his rifle on his shoulder.
What should he do?
What was the safest thing to do with Hakija?
“This one is just a boy,” a soldier said. “Bring him down from the hill. Give him some water.”
In that moment, he decided. Hakija needed water. He needed water. For now, they would come down off the hill near Konjević Polje with all the others. There would be another chance for escape and he would seize it. Later.
A soldier gave Hakija water from his canteen while he clung to his brother’s hand.
He looked the Chetnik in the eye, polite and determined.
“Don’t separate us,” he said. “He is only ten.”
“No,” the Chetnik said. “I won’t separate you.”
When Hakija was finished, he received his share from the canteen. He sipped quickly, mightily, knowing that next time he might not be so lucky. In that moment, he saw a halo around the Chetnik’s head. He saw that his eyes were kind, his hands gentle. He thanked him for his goodness.
“Stay on the bus with your brother,” the soldier told him. “Keep hold of his hand.”
They were shepherded to the bus like lost sheep. His hands were clammy from the heat; so were Hakija’s. Still, they held on. The bus was as hot and crowded as the trek had been. But it was a mercy to be able to sit. He thanked Allah, he praised His glorious names. There was nothing else to do but sit and wonder and be afraid. Without showing he was afraid to his brother.
The drive was short and Hakija slept until they arrived at Kravica where the bus pulled up in front of a warehouse. In the field outside the warehouse, there were hundreds—or was it thousands?—of men. They were sitting on the ground with their hands behind their heads. Resting, their faces were just like his. Stoic. Bewildered. Terrified. They knew what was coming but they didn’t absolutely know. They hoped, just a little, that the sun would rise without blood.
They begged for water. He wished now he had not been so selfish with the canteen. He should have asked his brothers. He should have asked the thin, petrified men all around him, “Uncle, will you take a sip?”
He had thought only of himself and Hakija.
The engine died. The door opened and the Chetniks began to argue.
The driver wanted the men to get off.
The soldiers who guarded the warehouse refused. “We already have too many here. Take them somewhere else.”
From the warehouse he could hear screams. Cries of desperation.
Not the warehouse, then. It would be hard to escape with Haki from the warehouse.
Allah show us a way, he whispered. Allah deliver us from evil.
There was noise all around them. More buses, some trucks. More people. More prisoners. There were too many. It was a convoy now. An officer came with orders. Their bus driver shrugged. He started up the engine again.
For so long, there had been no fuel in Srebrenica. Here, in moments, so many trucks, so many buses. The convoy began to travel again. He pushed Hakija’s head down and craned his neck out the window. They were leaving Kravica behind, but where would they be taken next? Where would the road end? Would there be food or water when they got off the bus?
He didn’t think so.
Those quiet men in the field told him otherwise. Their pleas for water had been ignored. In the woods, some of the men had drunk their own urine. If necessary, if they got to that point, he and Haki would do the same. He would have to wait and see.
The fields rolled by, the green fields of his country. He felt as if his stomach was being wrenched from him, but it wasn’t a physical feeling. It was in his mind. The mind that schemed and planned and thought of survival. The mind that had seen the bodies of the men hunted down in the woods.
Where was the bus going? When would it stop?
He read the signs for Bratunac.
He knew what was in Bratunac. He didn’t want the bus to stop in Bratunac.
It stopped at the school: Vuk Karadžić. The site of the massacre three years ago.
He would not tell Hakija.
Even Hakija knew about Vuk Karadžić and the killing.
He didn’t need to know that his brother had made the deadliest decision of their lives, to come down from the hills in the hopes of getting water.
He put his hands over Hakija’s ears. Haki knew the sound of screaming and gunfire as well as he did. In the school there was death.
Please, he prayed. Let it be like the warehouse. Let it be full. Let them say there is no room for us.
Abruptly, the convoy came to a halt. A Chetnik rapped on the door.
Don’t open it. Almighty Allah, Lord of all that is good, please don’t open it.
The driver slid the doors wide, admitting his friend.
“Don’t let them off the bus,” the Chetnik said. “There’s no room. We’re not finished in there.”
Praise Allah, praise Allah.
He wouldn’t think about what the words meant, what it meant to be finished. He would only think about opportunities. Opportunities to escape with Hakija at his side.
The driver shut the door but still he could hear the screams from the school. Wasn’t it wrong to kill people inside a children’s school? They had done it three years ago, they were doing it now. What about the day when the children came back and needed a place for their classes? What would they do then? Unless they already knew that no one was coming back.
It was true, but he didn’t want to admit it. Everywhere they had stopped, he had seen the faces of dead men.
The convoy came to its final stop.
And he understood that they would spend this night at the execution site, but with the infinite mercy of Allah’s grace and favor, he prayed they would not be taken off the bus.
Hakija would sleep but he would stay awake, alert to the sound of Chetnik boots, Chetnik guns. He would watch and see what he could learn. He would think of his mother, waiting for them in Tuzla.
And as he listened to the sounds of his people dying all around him, he would try with all his might not to break down and cry.
20.
All wounds will be healed but not this one.
Rachel took over from the local police with minimal fuss. The person who’d broken into Drayton’s house was Melanie Blessant. The local landscapers, the Osmond brothers, were the ones who had called the police. They waited in the garden while Melanie arranged herself in a confrontational posture on the hood of Rachel’s car.
“We asked you not to return to the house, Ms. Blessant,” she said. There was a hint of exasperation in her voice. “What were you looking for?”
“It’s my home, too. I lived there with Chris. You can’t keep me out of it.”
“As of this moment, we don’t know what your legal standing is. Mr. Drayton may have had heirs. He may have debts with regard to the house: a mortgage, liens. These are things we need to clear up before we can ascertain the extent of your rights. And of course, a will would greatly help.”
Melanie batted her baffled blue eyes at Rachel. She was dressed in leopard-skin leggings so tight they were in danger of splitting across her rear as she twisted from side to side on Rachel’s car. With that and the ample cleavage spilling from a leopard-print bra showcased inside a white hoodie, the entire effect dazzled.
“Wasn’t it in the safe?”
“Have you ever seen it there, Ms. Blessant? Did Mr. Drayton tell you that he kept it in the safe?”
“Not exactly, but where else would it be? I didn’t see it anywhere else in the house.”
Her tone was martyred. Evidently, the police were to blame for her misfortune.
“If he had a will, Mr. Drayton most likely kept it at his lawyer’s office. We’ll have that information very soon, I’m sure. And in the meantime, do you have the combination of Mr. Drayton’s safe? Have you ever removed anything from it?”
Melanie Blessant slid off the car with the practiced movement of a pole dancer at a strip club. She dusted one hand over her derriere, her gaze taking in the Osmonds. She produced a sexy little smirk. As she raised her hand to brush a lock of hair from her face, Rachel caught sight of the ring on her finger—bold, bright, and blinding.
“Chrissie liked his privacy. I didn’t mess about in his stuff. He wouldn’t have liked it.”
Before his death, Rachel thought. Afterward, she wouldn’t have been as fussy.
“Did you ever see any of the papers he kept in his safe? Apart from the letters we’ve already discussed?”
Melanie pretended to think, slipping one foot out of its sandal and rubbing it luxuriously against the back of her calf. Aldo and Harry Osmond watched her, fascinated. She was like a human Barbie doll, but it didn’t mean she was any less intriguing. Surely that wasn’t glitter she had dusted between her breasts? It matched the dangly earrings she wore. Nate should have inserted Melanie into one of his books.
“I don’t think there was anything else. I mean, I wouldn’t know.” She patted her hair complacently.
He lost his temper with you, Rachel translated.
“You told us before that you’d read some of the letters. What did you make of them?”
“You expect me to remember that nonsense?” She turned on Rachel like a shrew. “Why would I, if Chrissie warned me off?”
“Just on the off chance.”
Rachel waited her out, knowing an audience would be irresistible to a woman like Melanie.
“Things about maps and rivers, not my cup of tea, I can tell you. Directions, I think?” She made it a question. “And a whole lotta names, too strange for normal people to understand.” A look of comprehension dawned over her face like a long-delayed sunrise. “I mean, the strangest thing is that the letters weren’t for Chrissie at all. Some idiot just kept leaving them for him. Telling him to take the death road.”
Now this was something.
“The death road?”
“That’s
what I said.” Melanie tapped her nails against the side mirror on Rachel’s car. “That’s exactly what I said. It doesn’t make sense. What kind of map talks about a death road or death march?” Her eyes became fatuous and wide. “Unless? Was it Las Vegas, do you think? Maybe Death Valley?”
Rachel sighed. There would be no elucidation here. Still. There was something about the safe. Something not entirely forthright.
* * *
Watching Melanie Blessant flounce her way across the street to her dark sedan, the headache that had subsided over her morning walk with Nathan returned to Rachel in full force. She squinted against a watery sun, thinking. Her gaze came to rest on the Osmonds. Why had they been here to call the police? She introduced herself, advancing into the garden.
They were two brothers in their early thirties with square faces that tapered down to narrow chins and eyes the color of steel bolts, sometimes blue, sometimes green, depending on the light. Scrawny, with the thick-skinned hands of gardeners. They wore dirt-stained T-shirts under their coveralls, and Harry, the younger of the two, shaded his face with a wide-brimmed hat. Aldo, the elder brother, fielded Rachel’s questions, his eyes wary.
“You’ve heard about Mr. Drayton’s death?”
Aldo nodded. He placed one hand on his brother’s shoulder and held it there, his knuckles white against his sunburnt skin.
“Yet, you’re still coming round.”
“We owe Mr. Drayton two more treatments.” His voice had a sliding pitch Rachel found unusual. “We worked well together on his garden. We wouldn’t want to neglect it now.”
“How long had your arrangement with Mr. Drayton been in place?”
“Two years? A little more? He liked our work very much.”
She switched her attention to Harry.
“What did the work involve?”
Aldo reached over to adjust the brim of Harry’s hat, pulling it low over his face. Rachel noticed the creeping system of lines about his eyes and mouth as he did so. For a young man, he had a gaunt, watchful quality.
“My brother doesn’t talk much.” He placed a hand to his head in a speaking gesture. “He has some difficulties.”
The Unquiet Dead Page 15