“Audrey, this is my mother, Mila Radovic.”
Mila’s handshake was perfunctory. “I am pleased to meet you, Audrey.” The flat tone of her voice suggested otherwise.
Audrey ignored the chill. “Sasha has told me so much about you. I look forward to getting to know you better.” Her clipped British accent was BBC proper. That, along with her tailored clothes and Omega Seamaster watch, spelled education and the moneyed class.
“And this is my … this is the man who fathered me, Bill Bohannon, and his friend, Ten Norbu.”
So Sasha wasn’t so uninformed, after all.
Audrey’s clear eyes lingered on each of us. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, shaking our hands.
“Okay, then.” Sasha seemed relieved to get the introductions over with. “Well?” He spread his hands. “What do we do now?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Audrey said, “but I need a moment to catch up. I mean, a month ago, I didn’t know you even existed. Now? All this? It’s a little surreal. Kind of wonderful, but weird, too.”
She was right; I, too, was starting to feel spacey. Like a character in a time warp.
Mila’s brisk voice broke the spell. “All right. We know situation is unusual. We need fix mess.”
A thought prodded: Was Mila just highly practical? Or was she one of those Fun Cops who blew the whistle when people started feeling too good around her? Time would tell, but I had my suspicions.
A follow-up question muscled its way forward, irritating, but probably accurate: Was I assuming things about Mila to justify my need for Bill to be a good boy and come home?
My eyes strayed to Bill. He was pulling on his upper lip, where his mustache used to be. His jaw was set.
Foolish me. Bill was not going to be a good boy, not for me, not for Martha. He’d gotten hold of something here, like a dog with a bone, and he wasn’t going to let go until he had wrangled some kind of justice out of it.
I wasn’t talking about Mila. I was talking about Belma.
And I knew this, because I felt the same way.
Let go of expectations.
So I did. I let go of knowing what should happen next. Lama Sonam’s calm voice reached out to me, from long ago: “Don’t try to drive the bus from the backseat, Tenzing. Don’t attempt to control what you cannot.” Something released in my belly, that tight vise of obligations to Martha and expectations of Bill. I wasn’t clear just who was driving, but I was very sure it wasn’t me. I took a breath, and freed the bus to go where it needed to.
A scream pierced the room. Belma had bolted upright and was panting, her head twitching from side to side, her sight turned inward, on nightmare images. Audrey moved to her side and hugged her close. She stroked her hair, arms, and back, as if gentling a wild colt. Mila stared intently as Audrey soothed the girl.
Something in Mila softened as well, and I felt moved to put my arm around her shoulders.
Mila reared back, eyes again flashing, before she read my intent: I meant her no harm. She closed her eyes. All was still, except for the sound of Belma’s rough breath, slowly returning to normal. I looked around at this random, and yes, surreal collection of people, a makeshift family united by concern for the girl on the couch. The sad irony was that this gathering would not exist except for one of the cruelest ideas human beings had ever come up with: buying and selling each other for harm and for foul.
Belma had climbed out of the dark place. She said something to Audrey in Bosnian. Audrey’s answer was gentle enough to transform the guttural language into a kind of lullaby. Sasha stood quietly by, a comforting presence.
Audrey translated. “She asked why everybody was staring at her. I told her she was having a nightmare and we were loving her so she wouldn’t feel scared anymore.”
My job is pretty simple: to love and respect my clients until they learn to love and respect themselves.
I found myself on yet another memory spiral back through time, to a novice class at Dorje Yidam on “puzzle sayings,” the Tibetan version of Zen koans. Lama Jamyang would call out a puzzle saying, and we were expected to grapple with the ambiguity in our minds until he called out another one. We’d usually get through a dozen per class. I’d always looked forward to the exercise; it gave me a good mental stretch.
One day our ancient teacher called out a puzzle saying that made us all erupt in laughter: If we’re all here to help others, what are the others here for?
Watching Audrey love Belma out of her nightmare was an unambiguous, living reminder of what we were all here for.
CHAPTER 20
A vast herd of faceless children. Thick. Boundless. They slog forward, their pace slow and strained, their arms outstretched as if striving to get somewhere that’s perpetually out of reach. They are compelled by yearning, by faint hope mixed with despair. At the back of the herd lag two terrified, vulnerable little boys, the easiest of prey.
I push through to the front. There is light ahead. I will lead them toward it.
A faint call to prayer stirred me to life. Dawn kissed the green-spired minaret outside my hotel window. In minutes, my shoe soles were traversing the rough cobbles of the Stari Grad, with its Ottoman-era sweeps and curves. Seven solid hours of sleep lay behind me. I was determined to spend the next few exploring, before the others woke up, and the next round of hard decision-making began.
Last night had not ended well. We’d all agreed that reuniting Belma with her two sisters was a priority, but deciding how to do so created a fresh round of bickering and jockeying for control, even with one of us no longer interested in taking the wheel.
“One thing I want to make clear,” Sasha had said at one point, glaring at Bill and me, “this is my problem to fix. If I want any help, I’ll ask for it.”
The logistics were nightmarish, the potential for failure huge. Dubrovnik was hours away, and the sisters might have already been shipped off to who knows where.
I’d left the others making lists of pros and cons, and returned to my room. Naturally, Martha called the moment I walked in the door.
“Ten! Finally!”
I wasn’t in the mood.
“Will you excuse me for a moment, Martha?”
I walked down the hotel corridor and knocked on Bill’s door. He opened it, eyebrows raised.
“Can you come out here for a moment?”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
He stepped outside. I raised the phone to my ear. “Martha, I’ve got Bill here. Time to talk to each other. I’m officially resigning as middleman.”
I handed the phone, and my room key, to Bill. “Bring it back when you’re done. I’m going to bed.”
I must have been dead asleep by the time he was finished talking, because my phone and key were on the coffee table in the morning, and I hadn’t heard a sound.
Vendors were starting to unlock shops and set up their wares. I left the cobbled streets and silent clock towers of Stari Grad and headed east. Soon I was laboring up a narrow road, steep enough to live comfortably in San Francisco, until I reached my goal. A sharply sloped, well-tended lawn bristled with hundreds of pointed memorials. Narrow rectangular pillars carved out of white stone were planted in rows in the emerald grass like spears of grief. All bore the birth and death dates of Muslim boys, some too young to marry or drive a car, but not too young to die in the Bosnian War.
I wandered between markers, and paused, heart heavy, to sit at a small, central gazebo. Below, the city preened, glowing and, yes, beautiful in the morning light.
I sensed I was not alone. I turned. To my right, near a small copse of trees, a woman sat cross-legged by one of the graves. A thick curtain of brown hair, streaked with gray, hid her face.
But not from me.
“Mila?”
She raised her eyes. I braced for the scowl, but received a half-smile. “Are you following me?”
“No. Just needed a walk.”
I moved to her side and bent to read the name c
arved into the white stone: Yuri Radovic. “Your brother?”
She smoothed the grass with one palm.
“Bill was thinking I am blaming him for Yuri’s death. I do not. Human nature is to blame.”
I sat beside her.
“I know I come across as hard woman. Cynical. But I think seeing truth the only way to survive.”
I said nothing.
“I call my mother last night, to tell her Sasha is okay. You know what she say? ‘No thanks to you.’ And then she tells me all the ways I am failure as daughter, as mother. Back to her old ways. My mother, she finds answers in her imam, her new way of believing. But it only makes her more stiff. More angry.”
Mila traced the carved letters with one finger. “She was not always like this. But life makes her tired, wears her down, you know?”
“The war?”
“Da, of course, but before that, too. Her first husband, he is—how you say it? Light of living? She loves him very much.”
“The light of her life?”
“Yes—light of her life. He died of heart attack only three years after they get married. My mother is eighteen when married, but her husband is much older. Catholic Serb. War hero. He and his younger brother very successful, they have all the government contracts in the sixties. Exporting machinery. Importing goods for Tito. Then my mother’s husband dies and everything, gone! Twenty-one and widow with two babies—my half-brothers.” Mila made a face. “I’m sorry, I talk and talk. It is this place. Brings up so many memories.”
“No, it’s interesting. So when did you come along?”
“Irena, she moves back here, to Sarajevo. She is lucky, because many widows back then, no one wants them. But my father meets her at a lecture and that is it. My mother is the light of his life. They marry in 1970. Then she has me, and my baby brother, Yuri. Finally she is happy again. Because now she has Yuri. Things start to be okay. I finish school, study to become a doctor …” Her voice trailed off.
“What did your father do? For work, I mean.”
Mila’s eyes softened. “He is, sorry, was a professor, of religious studies. He loved his work very much. Always teaching forgiving, accepting different gods. This is why the Serbs send him to Omarska, I think.”
Omarska death camp. I had seen the pictures of its skeletal captives in one of my books.
A bird landed in the soft soil next to us. Pecked up a few morsels of something, and flew off again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did your father survive?”
“No and yes. His spirit, it dies, but he came back after the war is over. His body dies last year. He is killed last year.” Her laugh was harsh. “My father survives Omarska. Then he is killed at home. Shot in the head.” She looked at me. “Murdered.”
“Oh, Mila.” I was too unsettled to say anything more. How much tragedy can one family experience?
But Mila had moved on. “You have any brothers or sisters, Tenzing?”
Usually I hedged at this question, but I had no defenses up. “A half-brother. Nawang.” I hadn’t thought about Nawang in years—it felt strange to say his name out loud.
“My mother has four children, but she only loves one. When he died, and then husband disappears, she gives up. Stops eating. Talking. Even washing. So you see,” Mila turned to me, “I cannot stay with Bill, then. I have to take care of my baby, and my mother!”
“What about the other two, your other brothers?”
“Half-brothers.” Her face grew grim. “Their father is Serb. What do you think?”
She stood up, brushing grass from the seat of her jeans. I followed suit. We stood side by side, gazing at the peaceful terra-cotta roofs and flowering gardens below.
“What about now? Do you ever see them? Your half-brothers?”
She stared at the view, as if memorizing every house. “You remember when I talk about bullies? The first time we meet?”
“I do.”
She turned to me. “I am talking about them, Zarko and Stojan.”
My blood ran ice-cold and I shivered, although the morning was already hot. I kept my voice casual. “Mila, can I ask you something? Irena’s first husband: What was his name?”
Her mouth twisted around the answer. “Stasic. Milo Stasic.”
Both our phones buzzed at once. Bill was calling me at the same time as Sasha was calling his mother.
“Where are you? Sasha’s come up with a plan,” Bill said. He was letting his son take the wheel. I hoped that was wise.
Mila’s terrified look said otherwise.
“So Audrey and I will go back to Dubrovnik with you, Ten, if that’s okay,” Sasha explained. “My mother will keep Belma with her.”
I looked over at Bill, who was keeping very quiet. He shifted his weight, trying not to sound too resentful. “I’m to stay put here and figure out what to do with the three girls once you bring the sisters back. If you bring them back.”
Sasha had been emphatic about leaving Bill out of this. I sympathized. I was no stranger to struggles between sons and fathers. Maybe it was a sign of immaturity, but I had a much easier time understanding things from Sasha’s perspective than from Bill’s.
“How do you plan on the three of us getting there?” I asked.
Everyone looked at Sasha. Sasha shrugged. “Not sure. Train, I guess. Though they may still be watching the station. Why?”
“I have an idea,” I said.
Petar picked us up in his own car, a slightly dinged-up but serviceable Hyundai station wagon, burgundy, with a topcoat of grime. Perfect for surveillance, actually.
His gap-toothed grin flashed even wider when I handed over a carton of his favorite smokes.
“Thanks, Monkevic. But you still pay me for drive, yes?” Sasha and Audrey climbed into the back, and I sat up front with Petar and his overflowing ashtray. I wanted to mine him for a little more information. I just hoped Sasha and Audrey would be tired enough to doze off. I didn’t want them listening in.
We set off around two in the afternoon. My tourism book estimated the drive from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik at four hours. Knowing Petar’s skills, I subtracted an hour, which would get us there before sunset.
Soon we had left all traces of urban sprawl behind us and were climbing and descending a narrow mountain road marked by hair-raising views, scarily slender bridges, and tunnels gouged through unreceptive terrain. Petar chain-smoked as he adeptly hugged the thin strip of asphalt, occasionally laying on his horn to force an oncoming car to give way. I was very glad he was driving. Give me an L.A. freeway over one-lane mountain deathtraps any day.
Sasha and Audrey chatted quietly. I stared at the blur of scenery until finally the backseat was silent.
Petar cleared his throat. “That boy. He your friend you come to visit?”
“Not exactly.”
He nodded, as if he already knew.
“Petar,” I said, “we’re not going to Dubrovnik to sunbathe on the beach.”
He nodded again.
“Someone there needs our help. Two someones, in fact. You don’t need to get involved, but I wanted you to know.”
“What kind of trouble these people in?”
“Girls. Two young girls.” I stepped across the line between like and trust. “Human trafficking kind of trouble.”
His response surprised me. “Monkevic, what you do? You monk, like father?”
“No. Actually, I used to be a police officer, but I left the force three years ago. Now I’m a private detective.”
He slapped his thigh. “Ha! I know this! We are brothers! Me, too, I used to be policija.” He laughed at my look of surprise. “Da! Police, like you! Six years ago, I leave. Not enough money for raising my daughters.” He corrected himself. “Not enough pay. Plenty, how you say it, money under table.”
“Right.”
“Driving taxi okay. But sometimes I miss excitement. I like when heart go bang bang, like bullet, you know?”
“I do know. So, you’re okay with this, wi
th what we’re doing here?”
“How old these girls?”
“Eleven and twelve.”
“Mine? Ten and twelve,” he said. “Yes, Monkevic. I am okay with this. Today is good day.”
Over the course of several roller-coaster turns and tunnels, he told me about his daughters, and I told him about my cat.
“You have woman?”
I thought about Julie. “Not really, not at the moment. I did have one once, but she left.”
He grunted. “Good woman important, Monkevic.”
I brought our conversation back to trafficking. I now had a link, however unlikely, between Milo Stasic’s newly renamed Van Nuys company, Agvan Supply, and Sasha Radovic. But I didn’t know where Bosnia fit in.
“Have you heard anything about using the Internet for illegal trafficking in this country? Not the regular Internet, but a hidden one? A dark web?”
“I not hear of this dark web.”
“These guys do all their business online. Even use cyber currency for payment. Computer bytes, instead of dollars, or marks. Cyber-criminals.”
“I not hear of this,” he repeated. “But I believe. In our country, police system have many levels, many … compartment?”
“Departments.”
“Da. Part of bullshit reform. One keeping borders safe, another for if you rob bank or shoot wife. One for politicians to keep job and”—Petar made a rude gesture—“screw the people. But new department is SIPA.” He pronounced it see-pa. “For big investigation. SIPA very important. Many targets. Organized crime, terrorists. International activity. Also, this trafficking.”
“Like the FBI and Homeland Security, combined.”
“Da. But when they make SIPA, they make stupid mistake. They give SIPA trafficking, and give cyber-crime to other department.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Now SIPA told to get traffickers, but not allowed to look on Internet. Like fisherman using net with huge tear in middle!”
The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) Page 17