The Company We Keep

by Robert Baer

  Ron shakes his head in disbelief, as if their mission depends on the exact number of bottles of water they have. Curtis takes a bottle out of a box and examines the label. Not his brand, perhaps? But he holds back.

  I hand them Cokes from the fridge as a peace offering. They drink them quietly as they take equipment out of the cases. I have no idea what most of it is.

  That evening I drive back to the house with ten more cases of water, a case of beer, and a bottle of bubble bath. Someone’s closed the fence, and I have to unlatch it to get in. No one answers the door, and I go around the back.

  The two are standing on the lawn in front of what looks like a giant amber parasol. It’s at least fifteen feet across. I know it’s a transmitter antenna, but why is it so big? It could never be mistaken for the type of antenna you see relief groups here using.

  Back at the apartment Charlie and Riley are sharing, we took great pains to keep the parabolic mic hidden, but this communication antenna might as well be a giant neon arrow pointing at the house I took so much pain to keep clean.

  “Nothing smaller?” I ask.

  “It’s broadband to send back voice.”

  Ron bends down to make a last adjustment to the quadrupod the antenna sits on.

  I never considered that they’d have to send back voice. What I imagined was my walking up here from the apartment with a cassette tape, the linguist translating and transcribing it into a text message, and the communicator then sending it to Washington via a tacset—an instrument the size of a briefcase.

  It looks as though all my plans for invisibility are out the window. The neighbors have got to notice the antenna, which means it’s only a matter of time before someone whispers something to Bosnian intelligence. We haven’t even started and we’re already running against the clock.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ninja rocks are small bits of the ceramic from spark plugs, used by crackheads and jerkoffs to break any of the tempered glass on a car (anything except the windshield). Usually the door glass.

  It has to do with hardness. Glass is actually “harder” than iron on the Mohs scale, and spark plug ceramic (technically called “aluminium oxide ceramic”) is much harder than glass. Aluminium oxide ceramic actually rates a 9 on the Mohs scale; diamonds are 10, glass is 6.5, and iron is 4.5. That’s the key to the whole thing, and why it’s surprisingly hard to break a window with a hammer and surprisingly easy to break it with a small, light little shard of innocent white spark plug ceramic.

  —www.ridelust.com/obscure-burglary-tools-of-the-trade-ninja-rocks

  Sarajevo: DAYNA

  Charlie and I have learned to live with the parabolic mic, the two of us camping where we can. Life is at its most basic, but Brad and Lara are on their way to relieve us. The only variable is that Bob moves our meetings farther and farther away from Sarajevo, deeper into the Croat areas where Bosnian intelligence won’t go.

  I notice that Bob’s even more cautious these days because the parabolic mic has started to turn up a lot of good leads—for example, the names of Hizballah operatives and even a couple of telephone numbers. There have even been a couple of great intelligence reports. It’s much better than anyone expected. Separately, with a telephoto lens we’ve been able to get plate numbers for their cars.

  The problem now is what to do with it all. If it’s a residential address we’ve picked up, how do we find out which Hizballah operatives live there? Or what their phone number is? The same goes with license plate numbers. We need to know who a car is registered to, and the address that goes along with it.

  In the last couple of meetings Bob has been talking about getting into police records—recruiting a local cop. One day I finally raise my hand, saying I think I know how to meet one. He doesn’t ask how, and only says, “Go do it.”

  I have to admit I’m a lot more comfortable working with Bob. There’s a method to his nuttiness. All the moving people around at first looked like a circus without a ringmaster, but it’s now coming together nicely. I still haven’t accepted the idea of driving cars with advertisements down the side, but, who knows, maybe one day I will.

  The next day I go to the Holiday Inn to rent a car. The one they pull around front is a fairly new Fiat with local plates and no dents. It’s a car a tourist would rent—if there were any tourists here.

  I spend the next couple of hours driving around to make sure I’m not followed. To avoid tying the car to the apartment, I park it behind the National Library. I spend the rest of the afternoon walking the streets to make sure I’m clean. At dark I stop at a kiosk that sells car parts and buy a set of spark plugs. Back in the apartment, I wrap them in a towel, put it on the floor, and smash it with the heel of my boot. I pick out the crushed ceramic pieces and put them in a handkerchief.

  The next morning I go back to the National Library to pick up the Fiat. I drive it to the Bistrik police station. A cop is standing out front, talking to another man, but neither of them looks at me as I park. Before I get out of the car, I make sure the old carry-on suitcase is closed. I don’t want anyone to notice it’s empty. I lock all the doors.

  At a little after midnight I stand watch on the street above the police station. Jacob and Charlie walk up and down on the block in front of it, smoking. When a man comes by, they stop and talk. As soon as the man is out of sight, they turn around and start walking again. As they pass my Fiat, I see Jacob’s hand come out of his jacket pocket. I know he has a fistful of crushed ceramic in it. He barely brushes his hand against the Fiat’s rear passenger-side window, and then there’s shattered glass sparkling like diamonds on the pavement. Charlie and Jacob both keep walking, talking. I watch the police station for another ten minutes. No one comes out.

  The next morning I push through the front door of the police station. The cop behind a bulletproof glass window glances up at me, but then goes back to reading. I pause, making it look like I can’t make up my mind about what I want to do. He looks back up at me, quizzically this time. I look around as if I’m lost and then, with great hesitation, walk up to his window. “My car was broken into last night,” I say. He doesn’t understand English. I pantomime someone hitting something. I ramble on for a few minutes before asking if someone at the station speaks English.

  He pushes himself up and goes into the back. He comes back with a young Bosnian military officer, a lieutenant.

  “Can I help you?” the lieutenant asks. He’s young, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, unsure of himself.

  “My car was broken into, right outside here,” I say, pointing out the front door of the station and toward the street.

  He walks around, comes out a side door, and follows me out to the car. The glass is still on the sidewalk from last night, the suitcase in the backseat. He asks me what was in it. I tell him books and a camera. He shakes his head in sympathy, saying, “We need to file a report.”

  He’s obviously embarrassed this happened right in front of a police station, and I’m hoping he’ll go out of his way to help me.

  I drop by the station every day for three days to see if the lieutenant has any news about the car. I have a new question each time, from how much he thinks I should pay to fix the window to whether I should offer a reward in the newspaper for the return of my things. He offers to find the name of a good repair shop. On the third day I let it drop that his English is so good he should think about working for an international organization. “I have a friend looking for some help.”

  He nods his head, listening.

  “It would be interesting work. And you could do it in your free time.”

  He’s about to say something, and I interrupt. “You should just meet him, my friend.”

  “Why not?”

  I pretend I’m thinking about it, and then I mention a café where we could all meet.

  “What’s this friend’s name?” he asks.

  “Harold,” I tell him, and he writes it in his notebook.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Sometimes p
aranoia is just having all the facts.

  —William S. Burroughs

  Sarajevo: BOB

  I’m now living alone here in the Butmir house, our safe house near the airport. The days seem to grind on more and more slowly, and I kill time trying to fix the place up a little, and even do some gardening.

  Riley’s not due to come by for another three hours, so I go outside to survey the jungle around the house. The wild myrtle’s almost suffocated the rhododendron by the front door. In the garage I find a pair of clippers, but when I come out there are two children standing in the driveway staring at me. I smile and wave at them. They turn and run away, frightened. I can only conclude that I’m the subject of conversation in the village. Their parents no doubt told the kids that I’m a foreigner, and they need to be wary of me.

  It doesn’t surprise me. This place may be off the beaten path, but that doesn’t mean it’s invisible, nor are the team members who visit me. There never was any way we could have gone totally unnoticed in a place like Sarajevo. I decide it’s time to close this house down and find another one. In the meantime I have to decide whether the interest in the Butmir house goes beyond mere curiosity.

  I go back in the house, find a book, and pull up a chair in the dark doorway that gives me a good view of the road. I read, waiting for someone to pass. The first to stroll by are two elderly ladies, scarves covering their heads. They walk by the house without giving it a glance. I get up and walk through the rooms to watch them from a window on the other side. They still don’t show any interest in the house, so I go back to my chair and start reading again.

  Twenty minutes later an old Volkswagen stops just beyond the house. Two men are in it. They sit with the car idling. Neither looks at the house, but still it seems strange. Why would they stop at that exact place? I take down the plate number. It’s a couple of minutes before the car moves again.

  I can’t get the VW out of my mind. The road here is lightly traveled; only a couple of dozen cars a day pass along it. At my next meeting with the lieutenant, I’ll give him the plate number and see what he comes up with.

  I liked Riley’s lieutenant. He was young and earnest. He didn’t balk when I told him I was investigating organized crime, agreeing with me that it’s a big problem for Bosnia. He seemed happy with the five hundred dollars I pushed across the table in an envelope, the first of his monthly payments. He didn’t count the money—a good omen—and he didn’t show up in his uniform, either, or ask why I didn’t have an office, or a landline telephone number he could call. I wish all recruitments could go so easily.

  A horsecart comes by now, and the driver, like the old women, doesn’t look at the house. Right behind, though, two men walk by and give it a hard stare. At first I’m suspicious, but why wouldn’t they? Butmir is a village. Curiosity comes with the terrain. By the time I give up watching the street, I’m trying hard to convince myself this is dumb paranoia. I’ve been here too long, and I’m seeing ghosts.

  The next morning the doubts are back again, and I put on a pair of shorts and running shoes, my Interpol badge around my neck. I jog down 13 Juni, the road west of Butmir that leads toward the old Serbian lines. On either side of the road are signs with skulls and crossbones, landmine warnings. At the last house in Butmir I break into a run, not fast, but faster than I’ve been going. I run by the village of Donji Kotorac, where half the houses are shot up, empty, the doors wide open. Fifty yards down the road I come to the first Serb positions, which are abandoned. A French armored personnel carrier comes down the road, the gunner on top following me with his gaze. I make a left into Gornji Kotorac, which gives me a clear view of the road behind me. There’s no one on it, not a car or a person. If anyone was on me, they didn’t think it worth following me on my run.

  I go back, change quickly, and head out again in the old Toyota. Normally, at this time of day I drive out of town on the Mostar road, into the Croat areas. Today, though, I head directly into Sarajevo down the main highway. I turn right on to Ante Babica, take the street that runs parallel to the main road I’ve just come off of, and then turn left back to the main highway. I drive in larger and larger squares until I’m in the center of Sarajevo.

  When I turn around and head back to Butmir, I put on the gas, weaving through traffic, passing on the right. When I get to the straightaway on the main highway, I’m doing over sixty. A driver I cut off shakes his fist at me out the window. I pull away from a pack of cars and check my rearview window. No one’s behind me.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

  —The Matchmaker, Thornton Wilder

  Sarajevo: DAYNA

  If I hadn’t been standing in the window, I wouldn’t have seen the guy standing by the river, taking pictures of our apartment building. Instinctively I take a step back and to the side, into the dimness of the apartment.

  It can’t be a coincidence, I think. There’s no reason anyone would take a picture of our apartment. I peek around the curtain for a second look. He’s still there, his camera pointed directly up at our building. I turn around to look at the parabolic mic. It’s back away from the window, and behind a cloth hanging from the ceiling. Even if he were level with our window, he couldn’t see it.

  I try to imagine what the man sees through his lens other than the façade of a shabby apartment building. And why. He’s the only person along the river. There are no tourists, and the locals don’t go around taking pictures of their own city. Even a tourist wouldn’t take a picture of our building. There’s nothing distinctive about it.

  I watch for the few seconds it takes him to click off another half dozen photos or so. Maybe the man we rented the apartment from turned us into the police. Okay, he didn’t ask a single question about us—it was enough for him that we were Americans, the people who could relieve his city from the Serbs’ siege. But maybe he had second thoughts and got scared and went to the authorities. Still, wouldn’t the police have just knocked on the door to see what was going on inside?

  I find Charlie in the kitchen. “We have to go,” I whisper. He’s washing dishes and doesn’t hear me. I move to his side. “We have to go,” I whisper again, this time right in his ear. “What?” he says. I make a circular motion at the ceiling and then point at my ear—a spy’s hand signal that the place might be bugged. (I have to assume that if, in fact, someone’s watching us, the chances are good that the inside of the apartment’s been compromised too, bugged.)

  Charlie looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. I point to the door. Outside on the landing, I whisper that someone’s taking pictures of our building from across the river. “I’m sure of it.” Convinced, he goes back in to quickly put away the parabolic mic in its concealment device. We both know that if the Bosnians catch us with it, we’ll be arrested.

  On the street Charlie and I lock arms, a couple out for a walk. Neither of us turns around to look at where I last saw the photographer. At the corner intersection we cross the river on the Cobanija bridge. On the middle of the span, I turn to him so we’ll look like we’re deep in conversation.

  Charlie is facing me so I can look over his shoulder, in the direction of our apartment. He’s gone. I tell Charlie I don’t see him, and Charlie turns to look for himself. There’s no one on the opposite bank at all.

  We walk back across the bridge and circle behind our building so we don’t come back in the way we left. As we round the corner to the sidewalk on the riverbank, I stop dead. He’s standing right in front of our building, taking photos in the direction of the Hizballah safe house. It’s as if he’s marking what we would see from our apartment. Charlie sees him too, and I can feel him stiffen with panic. His expression tells me he knows we’re into something we don’t understand. It’s all so blatant I wonder if someone is warning us that they know what we’re up to. But that makes no sense, either.

  The guy calmly puts his camera in
his shoulder bag and starts back toward old town. Charlie points two fingers at his eyes to let me know we need to follow this guy. We wait until he’s a block away and then follow from a distance along the river, linking arms again and sauntering along behind. As I walk I imprint in my mind the man’s striped shirt, rust-colored hair, and thick-soled shoes, and his shape.

  He gives no sign of noticing us, and we follow him all the way to the cobbled streets of the old city. His pace is deliberate, and he holds on tightly to the strap of his camera bag. Then suddenly he stops dead in his tracks, turns around, and heads directly toward us. “Oh shit,” I hear Charlie say under his breath. But both of us stick to script and keep walking, arm in arm, directly past the guy without making eye contact. Charlie steers me into the closest building—a post office. Inside, he walks to the window, trying to see what direction the man’s taken. That doesn’t work, so he sends me out alone to see if I can catch up while he makes sure the apartment is safe.

  I leave the post office and start back toward where we crossed paths with our photographer. I’m almost running at first, but then I slow down. It’s the first thing they taught us: Never, ever run. And here I am panicking as though I’ve never worked a street. In this case, though, it doesn’t seem to matter. We’ve lost him. When I get back to the apartment, all I can do is look at Charlie and shrug my shoulders—I don’t have a clue what happened to the guy.

  Oddly, when headquarters hears the story, they aren’t particularly concerned. It makes us wonder if it was someone from headquarters or another agency taking the photos—and no one is going to cop to it.

  At first Bob makes a joke out of it, but then quickly turns serious, telling us it’s best that we go ahead and rotate people in and out, as well as remove the parabolic mic as a precaution. Brad and Lara will move into the apartment, replacing Charlie and me. They will limit themselves to taking pictures of people coming out of the Hizballah safe house with a telephoto lens. They’ll also try to determine whether the apartment is still being watched. If it is, the parabolic mic isn’t coming back. Everyone agrees it’s a risk leaving Brad and Lara here, but it’s one that headquarters and Bob are willing to take until we know more.