A Spy's Life

by Henry Porter

  They found a hotel in a street named Kulovića in the old part of the city and parked the Isuzu in a covered area at the rear, tipping the attendant more than his month’s salary to watch the car overnight. They checked into the hotel but avoided having to leave their passports at the desk when The Bird deftly palmed another large tip to the young manager.

  Half an hour later they all went to a restaurant near to the hotel where they ate from a menu of home comforts aimed at Western aid workers. As they walked the few yards back to the hotel, The Bird abruptly announced he was going to see someone and strode off down the street, hands thrust into a dark green jacket, scenting the wind like a lurcher.

  Strung out and exhausted, Harland and Eva went to their room, where Eva went straight to bed. Harland drew back the curtains and looked down on a confusion of dwellings and terraces and arrested construction. Ahead of him was a pockmarked minaret lit by a single arc light. He thought unsentimentally about the trajectory that had brought him to this strange, persecuted little city, and the two spies who had danced a distant quadrille down the years – Walter Vigo and Oleg Kochalyin.

  He went through the steps in his mind. The first involved his own ensnarement in Rome. But Kochalyin, the instigator if not quite the architect of this embarrassment – for that was all it was – had himself been lured by SIS to sell the secrets of the East. There followed the collapse of the Communist system. Kochalyin lured members of SIS into arrangements which began as convenient exchanges of information in a world which SIS was struggling to make sense of, and ended in the total corruption of at least one individual – Miles Morsehead. In response, Vigo had hired Eva to find out as much as she could about each new incarnation of Oleg Kochalyin.

  At that point they were even, but then came Vigo’s move against his colleagues, a superb piece of footwork which eliminated Kochalyin’s allies in SIS and left Vigo the uncontested heir, the saviour of the service.

  Harland knew, however, that any ideas of pattern in all this were simply false. Everything was temporary and fluid. The moment it suited Vigo and Kochalyin they would join hands in a fleeting partnership. They had done so before and there was nothing to stop them doing it again.

  That brought him back to the question that had hovered over their little party at the restaurant. How had Kochalyin learned of their imminent arrival at Sarajevo airport? Had he lured them using the bait of satellite pictures, or was someone in London keeping him informed?

  He turned from the window, gazed at Eva for a few chilly seconds, and slipped into bed beside her.

  They slept in each other’s arms. At some point during the night, a bell rang out in the city of victims. They stirred and made love, almost in their sleep.

  31

  A NAMELESS MOUNTAIN

  Eva was in the shower and Harland already dressed when he heard a knock at the door. The Bird looked strained. The skin around his eyes was taut and his optimistic manner had vanished.

  ‘We should leave soon,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s try and get out of the city by six-thirty.’

  He was holding a tray with bread rolls and a jug of white coffee that he had spirited from the hotel kitchen with the night manager’s aid.

  ‘Come on in,’ said Harland.

  Outside there was a steady dripping from the gutters and the lights were haloed with moisture. A thaw was setting in.

  Harland downed a cup of coffee in a few gulps and looked at The Bird.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Where’d you go last night?’

  ‘To a bar the manager told me about. It’s where the diplomatic people hang out in the Old Town. I found a chap there who does the security for the British residents. I had a feeling I’d bump into somebody. Macy and I have been trying to get this fellow to work for us.’

  Again Harland wondered dimly about the exact nature of Harp-Avocet’s business.

  ‘What did you find out?’ he asked.

  ‘That the attack on our plane is the only thing anyone’s talking about. All the men involved are dead and it goes without saying that the pilot was killed. The good news is that we weren’t seen at the airport.’

  ‘That’s something. What about the car?’

  ‘No mention of it. I gather that vehicles are nicked here then sold back to the dear old UN bit by bit as spare parts. Premature recycling, they call it.’

  ‘What’s eating you, Cuth?’ asked Harland, focusing on The Bird’s manner again.

  ‘The same thing as you, Bobby, the same thing as you. Who the fuck told them we were coming?’

  ‘Maybe nobody did. Maybe it was a set-up from the start,’ said Harland. ‘Maybe the business out there in the mountains is all designed to draw us here so we can be finished off. Maybe it was fixed from the very moment Reeve sent me those satellite pictures. After all, he got them from the CIA – the Americans are just as compromised by this affair as our lot and just as hot under the collar. They don’t want my report circulated any more than Vigo does because it will add weight to Tomas’s allegations.’ He paused and thought. ‘The alternative theory is a phone tap at Century House. I’m pretty sure that Vigo has been kept up to speed with my calls and e-mails which means he knows exactly what Reeve has been sending me. He knows I’ve learned the exact location of the site, and it wouldn’t take a genius to pass our intention, together with the time of departure, to a man that half SIS have been talking to for the last twenty years.’

  The Bird’s eyes narrowed. ‘Vigo’s a cunt, but is he that much of a cunt?’

  ‘He’s desperate. They all are.’

  ‘Yes, but it would have been a lot cleaner if they’d let you get out to the mountains before bumping you off. I mean, what the hell was the point of that mess at the airport last night?’

  Harland didn’t answer and instead poured more coffee.

  Eva emerged from the bathroom, still drying her hair.

  ‘It’s simple,’ she said, without looking up. ‘We know that Oleg wants us dead and we know that would suit the British SIS. They both have equal motive. Therefore it’s possible they are both trying to kill us – separately or together.’

  ‘So the rocket attack was organised by Vigo?’ said Harland. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘And made it appear like some kind of terrorist incident,’ said The Bird.

  ‘It’s possible,’ she said.

  Harland thought again.

  ‘Look, we’ll work on the assumption of maximum jeopardy, which means that we take it for granted that both parties want us out of the way. In those circumstances it’s sensible that only one of us goes – me. I will take pictures and if necessary bring back bones and then we’ll get the site officially excavated – or at least guarded until they can get a team there.’

  The Bird shook his head.

  ‘Very noble, Bobby, but it’s not on. Leave Eva if you want, but I’m coming. Besides, I’ve already fixed up a sort of driver-cum-guide. He only goes if I go.’ He produced the keys of the Isuzu from his pocket and waved them in front of Harland to underline the strength of his position.

  ‘We will all go,’ said Eva.

  Ibro stood waiting for them in the lobby, chatting to the night manager. His proportions revised the known limits of the human body. He was short – no more than 5' 2" – with a torso of near unimaginable breadth and strength. Harland saw that he had no neck to speak of and that he was compelled to hold his arms out at forty-five degrees because of the size of his chest muscles and biceps. His head poked out from the upturned collar of an old US airman’s jacket. He smiled as they arrived in the lobby and wiped crumbs of pastry from a black chin.

  ‘This is Ibro,’ said The Bird, as though they were old friends. ‘He speaks a little English and a lot of German.’ They all shook hands. ‘You are meeting quite a legend – one of the heroes of the siege of Sarajevo. He tells me he used to re-aim cannons by lifting their tow bars. Then he became the prime minister’s personal bodyguard and now he’s the hotel driver.’
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br />   They set out at six-twenty and travelled eastwards along the Miljacka River. Ibro pointed out sites on the way – the shelled-out National Library and a cemetery on the hill where some comrades were buried.

  ‘Weil Ich war,’ he recited, ‘wie ihr wart und ihr werdet sein, wie ich.’

  ‘Come again,’ said The Bird, trying to disentangle the German words from a thick Balkan accent.

  ‘For I have been what you are now, and you will be what I am now,’ said Eva. ‘It’s an inscription from a gravestone – a message from the dead to the living.’

  ‘Memento mori,’ murmured Harland.

  Climbing out of the city, they passed a line of civil-war trenches, then a truck halt called Café Dayton, at which point they plunged into a tunnel that led them to the Republika Srpska – the Serb part of Bosnia. Dawn was breaking in the east. They were now moving through a softer, more rural landscape with well-tended smallholdings. The houses and barns along the way were no longer burned out. Nothing stirred.

  They skirted the unremarkable town of Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital where the mass executions of 1995 were planned, and headed for the barren regions in the east. The road surface was broken and streaming with rivulets of snow melt. At a place called Rogatica they swung north, into the mountains. Harland began to feel they were getting near and once or twice he thought he glimpsed the range from the video still. They stopped the car in a wild, lonely place overlooking a valley and examined the map and satellite images again. Harland estimated they were five kilometres from the place where a road branched left and would take them to the site.

  ‘What do we know about this place?’ said The Bird.

  ‘Not much. There’s a small gorge at the top, which was the actual place of the massacre. A track leads past it and down the other side of the mountain. It’s large enough to take trucks and a sizeable loader.’ For a moment there was silence while The Bird pored over the map with Ibro, who at length gave his opinion that the road had been built as a short cut and that it would descend near a settlement on the other side of the mountain.

  They continued on their way in silence until they reached a wooded area where they began to see clods of soil on the tarmac. Here and there they noticed evidence of the mud stuck to the snow banks either side of the road. Eva asked Ibro what the weather had been like over the last two days. He replied that temperatures had not risen above freezing for the past thirty-six hours.

  Harland knew what she was thinking. The heavy frost explained why there was no change in the satellite pictures. They hadn’t been able to work the ground.

  They rounded a bend and came to the track exactly at the moment Harland expected. It was obvious from the marks on the road that the trucks had descended from the mountain, bringing the mixture of snow and soil with them. Ibro stopped, peered upwards and shook his head. The track was churned up and there were wheel ruts which would be too deep for the light Isuzu. They agreed to split up. Harland and Eva would climb the track, while The Bird and Ibro would drive round the mountain and look for another way up. If they failed to meet at the top they would rendezvous at this place in two hours’ time.

  As Harland opened his door, The Bird jumped out of the front seat and came round to meet him. He handed him a camera and then from his jacket pocket produced a Glock pistol which he placed firmly in Harland’s hand. He gave a black CZ75 to Eva, remarking that it was appropriately a Czech-made weapon. It seemed Ibro came with a small arsenal of handguns.

  They set off up the track, all the while seeking signs that trucks had passed that morning. They guessed not, since it was only just past eight-fifteen. Gradually the surface became firmer and they were able to make good progress. The mountain range in the distance came into view and they could see the track snake up the incline then skirt left of a rounded summit. They walked on. The landscape was very still. The only noise came from a pair of large ravens cavorting lazily in the updraft from the valley.

  At the top there was a longer hike than they’d expected. They paused for breath and looked out across the grey and white mountain scenery. Eva touched him on the face with the back of a gloved hand and they continued on their way. Fifteen minutes on, the track climbed sharply for about fifty yards then took a sudden turning to the left by a large protrusion of rock. They found themselves on a plateau bordered by two walls of rock that rose twenty feet above them. The place looked like an old quarry and it had the acoustics of a natural auditorium. Every sound they made reverberated around them.

  Their eyes traversed the scene. In front was a turning place where a battered truck stood, leaking oil on to the snow. It was obvious its wheels had become locked in the freezing slush. Beyond this was a large digger with its arm resting on the ground. A lot of tracks were visible in the snow, but no other sign of the vehicles shown in the aerial photographs. To their left the land shelved gently to form a depression, at the head of which was an opening in the earth. From this fanned caterpillar tracks of the digger.

  Harland scanned the treeless slope to their right and wondered about the squat shepherd’s hut that hugged an outcrop of rock about two hundred yards up. He saw that the track led across the plateau and plunged down on the north side of the mountain. Here the snow was untouched by vehicles.

  Eva muttered something about the place having a bad air. Harland didn’t reply. He was listening intently to the mountains and he wanted to make utterly sure they weren’t being observed. His eyes swept the whole scene again, taking in possible hiding places and routes of escape.

  Eva inhaled. Visibly steeling herself, she went forward to the excavated area.

  She bent down, grasped hold of something and heaved backwards. He went to help her and saw that large conifer boughs had been laid across the opening in the ground. They worked together to pull them away without getting down into the pit or letting their eyes stray to the earth. Soon they could no longer avoid it. The sun had surfaced in the east and threw a cold light into the pit.

  What they saw was unmistakable. Eva drew back a few feet and looked down. Many remains were down there but only in a few cases was the natural configuration of a skeleton intact. The digger had worked against the general orientation of the bodies. The teeth on the end of the bucket had clawed across them laterally, mixing up the bones and leaving sets of long striations across the ground. Harland counted the remains of about twenty people, but realised that the grave was much deeper than he had originally thought. Bodies had been piled on top of each other. When the massacre was over they had filled the hole with rubble and junk with the result that before reaching the bodies, the excavator had had to remove a layer that included chunks of road tarmac, a car door, old tyres, a fridge and a buckled bed frame.

  He got out his camera and began taking pictures, half his mind knowing that the camera would act as a barrier between him and the horror. He aimed the camera at the digger and the truck, taking care to include the registration plates. He stopped. Eva had sunk to her knees at the grave’s edge. Her face wore an expression of measureless pity. He moved to her side and saw what she was looking at. At the side of the pit was the skeleton of a child – a small boy, judging by the shorts and faded red T-shirt still visible. His hands were tied behind his back with wire. His skull was averted to the left, the mouth open. A little distance away was the complete skeleton of a man.

  ‘Was that his father?’ she asked simply.

  Harland took two more pictures but he was no longer able to distance himself from the scene. His eyes welled with tears of outrage and horror. He thought of the heat of that day, the certainty in each man and child’s mind that the soldiers were going to do this monstrous thing. He thought of Tomas and the stumbling, tearful old man who was tricked into believing he was going to be saved. The casualness and cruelty of the act struck him as though he were witnessing it at that very moment. He thought of the jeering soldiers and wondered how they might remember that day and whether it haunted them as it had Tomas.

  He was determ
ined that nothing should be lost. He walked around the grave, shooting from every angle, climbed into the bucket of the digger and focused on some bone residues. He took pictures of the far wall of rock where the men had been executed and the bullets had chipped at the surface, of the shell casings that had been exposed by the movement of the digger and glinted on the ground. He made studies of how the wrists of the victims were bound with fence wire, of the crumpled shoes, of a green and red checked shirt and a belt buckle, which might subsequently be used to identify the victims. Then he walked over to the truck and let down the tailgate, to be confronted by half a skull lying on a mass of earth and bone fragments. He photographed this from close up, from above and from a distance.

  He dropped down to Eva, overpowered by a sense of shame – shame for Tomas, shame for himself, shame for all men. It was by far the worst thing he had ever seen. Eva looked at him and shook her head slowly. After a little while he said they ought to be going because it wouldn’t be long before the men would arrive to finish the job. He needed to get back to Sarajevo with the pictures before all trace of the massacre had vanished.

  She turned her face to him again. An act of commemoration was needed, she said. They must do something to recognise Tomas’s part in what had happened there. She did not use the words massacre or slaughter or war crime. What they were looking at didn’t have a word, but they both knew that it was the result of an incomprehensible hatred, just as evident in the treatment of the remains. Eva muttered that the people in the grave were no less loved now than they had been on the day they were killed. Harland hadn’t thought about it like that, and he realised how much she was feeling the loss of Tomas. He shook his head, not knowing whether it should be an act of commemoration or atonement.

  At that moment they heard a loud report from the northern side of the mountain, not a gunshot but an explosion which sent two ravens wheeling into the air below them. They ran over to look down and saw the Isuzu on its side in flames about four hundred yards from them. The Bird and Ibro were nowhere to be seen. Harland took a few strides in the snow and then stopped, realising the car must have hit a mine. The road had been mined to protect the site from the curious but there wasn’t time to communicate this thought to Eva. He turned to see her gesturing up the hill to several figures who had issued from the stone hut and were now moving with difficulty through the snow down to the car.