by Tom Saric
“My name is Robert Braun. I am an investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.” He was lying, but it was only a half lie. He had been.
“Identification?”
Braun opened his wallet. Dr. Forlan checked the identification quickly.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m investigating a possible war crime. I believe Natalia Nemet was a witness.” Braun looked at the girl while he said this. “You’re not in any trouble, Natalia.”
Dr. Forlan turned towards her, deferring. She put a hand on his arm.
“It’s okay, Andrés,” she said in a soft voice. “I can speak with him.”
Dr. Forlan looked Braun up and down again and then walked back under the door.
Natalia waited until Forlan was out of earshot, looked at Braun with narrowed eyes, and then looked away and back again, as if from those glances she could glean all she needed to know about him.
“How did you find me?” Her voice wasn’t angry but disconcerted. As if to say, “If you’ve managed to find me, how many unsavory characters are behind you?”
Braun pulled out the address Mateja had written on the prescription pad and handed it to Natalia. “Mateja gave it to me.”
She held the page with both hands, studying the handwriting, as though she was confirming to herself that the wide loops of the Ls and Es were indeed Mateja’s.
She drew a breath, a half gasp, and then collected herself. “This is the wrong place to talk about this, I’m afraid. Could you meet me at my flat? 1574 Castillo Place, seven o’clock?”
He could.
“How did you meet Mateja?”
He sat at the folding table in Natalia’s kitchen. She poured herself coffee from a French press and ran the kitchen tap for a few seconds before filling a glass of water for Braun. The walls were bare except for a Catholic calendar hanging from a tack. Street traffic rang through the window. A neighbor’s blaring radio drifted through the walls.
“By chance. I have been investigating a war crime and she became a person of interest. She asked me to come and meet you.”
“For what reason, exactly?”
“The reason, I suppose, is because of what you and Dr. Forlan are doing behind steel doors in El Raval.”
She sipped her coffee, then gave him a hard look before her blue eyes turned downwards towards her cup. “I’d say it’s to do with your investigation.”
“Partly, maybe.”
“Entirely, no?”
“That’s not correct. I did find her because of the investigation, but what she told me and what I saw are the reasons I’m here,” he said, his voice regaining confidence. He didn’t dare bring up Luka Pavić, not at this juncture. “I assume that is the same reason you agreed to meet me in your apartment. So you could discuss this in private.”
She took another deep breath and another sip. She sat upright and folded her hands on the table.
“I couldn’t discuss our project out in the street. It’s not safe to talk about in the open. Too many ears. Discretion is our protection. You understand that, I assume, in your line of work?”
Braun nodded. He did.
“There are at least two hundred thousand women in the sex trade in Spain. Almost none of them are here freely. They’re trafficked. Mafia lure women from Africa, Russia, and the Balkans with promises of jobs in modeling or the travel industry or some other nonsense. Then they take the girls’ passports, get them hooked on drugs. They beat them if they ask to leave. They threaten to kill them if they go to police. And they do kill them if they’re caught trying to escape, and then they make that known to the other women. So the women are stuck, paralyzed by fear, and there’s no one to help.”
Her tone betrayed her anger. By no one helping, Braun assumed she meant the police. How this impotence came to be was not something he needed to ask. Legislation against trafficking existed, but enforcing it was another matter entirely. For every law created, a dozen loopholes could be found, and when the reward discovering one of these gaps was billions of euros, the efficiency with which these loopholes were exploited, stretched, and left gaping was altogether unsurprising.
She paused to collect herself before continuing.
“We help. Because people that can help—like you—don’t. We help them escape their captors. We give them food and medical attention. We give them shelter. We have to live behind a steel door because even people in positions like you—the police—can’t be trusted. They’re either on the payroll or they couldn’t be bothered. Or it’s too hard, takes too much time. The girls are whores, after all.”
“Natalia.”
“Pipa, please.”
“Pipa, then. I am here to help those girls. Those girls in Tuzla—Mateja and the others.”
“How will you do that?” she said, as though she’d heard this a thousand times before, to no effect.
“Passports.”
“How many?”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen?”
He nodded.
Her eyes brightened momentarily, then assumed a darker shade.
“Passports simply are not enough,” she said, shaking her head. “Even if you do get them.”
“I can get them. And I will. You have my word.”
“Even so, where are they going to go then, Mr. Braun? And how will they get there? Even getting across a border doesn’t mean a thing! These men have tentacles that stretch throughout Europe.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know.” Braun avoided her somber stare and gulped some water. Was it that she saw no use in eighteen passports put together by a master cobbler? Unlikely. Was it that she doubted Braun’s word? Possibly. Or his abilities? Probably. “But you do.”
At that she jerked up her head, noticing his deference to her abilities. “Because there are many ways to get them out of there,” she said. “But only a few proper ways. Few that will get them out alive, anyway.”
“You know how to do that.”
“You mustn’t send them the passports. Mateja’s mail can’t be considered secure. You will send them here.” She pointed at the table. “This flat. I want to check them myself. If the passports are shit, they’ll be stopped at the border, turned back. And then they are as good as dead. We’ll get them out when the time is right.”
“I’d have it no other way.”
Another pause. As Natalia sipped her coffee, Braun grappled with how to steer the conversation to Luka Pavić. What had she seen?
Then, to his surprise, she cut into the silence. “The reason I agreed to meet with you was not because of the girls.” She spoke quietly, as though divulging a mortal sin. “I want to know about your investigation.”
Braun was relieved she switched topics, but he struggled with where to begin.
“I was tasked with locating an accused war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. Luka Pavić.”
“They said he killed my parents.”
Braun nodded.
“He didn’t,” she said.
Braun nodded again. “I know.”
“But he turned himself in. Why?”
“We’ll get to that. Tell me what you remember from that day.”
She looked towards the window, staring out at the distance but really looking at nothing.
“I only remember bits and pieces. It was so long ago, and I was so little.”
She slouched down, talking into her mug. She was no longer in Spain; she was back there, on the front line.
“I had a little stroller, too small for a baby but big enough for my doll. I was playing with her in the living room. My mom was packing. She said we were going on a trip—I was so excited about it, but now I know it was to get off the front line. Our neighbors were packing up too. They told me that we were going on vacation.”
She chuckled softly, a fleeting, fond image in the midst of an unfolding tragedy.
“My dad and two men were in the kitchen. There were a lot of g
irls, teenagers, in the living room. They had a lot of papers out. Black and white pictures, but I wasn’t allowed to go in there. They said it was important. Then I went into the bedroom where my mom was packing up. Really quickly. She seemed scared. And then, in the hallway, we heard footsteps, loud, a man’s. I heard a gun. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I started to scream, but my mom covered my mouth, told me to be quiet. There were more footsteps. She started to tell me how much she loved me, then she gave me...”
She faltered. She’d been pushing this away for years, Braun thought. Natalia brought her hands to her face and rested her chin on the knuckles of her thumbs, then exhaled through her fingers before opening her eyes again.
“We waited until the footsteps went further away. Then my mom pushed me into the bathroom, shoving me underneath the sink. She told me to stay in there at least until it was dark. That it was hide-and-seek. She told me she loved me. She told me to say my Hail Marys.
“And I stayed in there. I heard my mom scream, and then I heard more shots, more footsteps. Things became quiet. I heard some dragging along the floor, and that was it. I just prayed and prayed. I didn’t even know what I was praying for.”
She looked at the table and chuckled at the childhood absurdity of her actions. When her eyes drifted up and met Braun’s, her smile disappeared.
“You know that I didn’t even realize they were killed until I was a teenager? I didn’t put it together—the bullets and the footsteps. To me, they were out there somewhere. The day I realized what actually happened—that was the hardest day.”
“And you saw Luka Pavić?”
“I did. A long time later, footsteps came into the bathroom. I was so scared. He opened the door. A soldier. I remember his face. He looked so kind, so… so horrified. He held me.”
She placed a hand to her cheek, seeming to savor the memory of Luka’s touch on her skin.
“Then there were lots of guns, lots of shooting through the windows. Glass breaking. A fire started. The whole house was burning. I remember seeing my dolls melting in the fire. But he kept holding me until I got scared and ran away.
“And I kept running, running, as fast as I could. And I turned and I saw another man with a gun run after me.”
“And he took you to Azra’s?”
She nodded.
“Did he have a tattoo?”
“On his arm. A tiger.” She paused. Then, “I want to testify.”
“I understand why you would want to, but you can’t,” he said guardedly.
Testimony from her would be immediately questioned as unreliable, especially when coupled with Pavić’s confession, and would only serve to put Sara and Natalie in more harm’s way.
“Why?” Natalia crossed her arms, indignant.
“Because he confessed for a reason. He wants to be convicted.”
“For a reason?”
Braun started to divulge the details despite his best intentions.
“Because the men behind this—these traffickers—will kill his family if he doesn’t. So I don’t see any way around it, and neither does he.”
“So you leave an innocent man to rot in prison.”
She couldn’t know more. It could hinder the only course of justice left. “Better than an innocent woman and child murdered.”
“I suppose.”
“Ultimately, the men behind this—your parents’ murderers—will be found and brought to justice. Just not now. You must understand that.”
He could tell she didn’t. Just another example of police not helping. A flimsy explanation by yet another man standing idly by and doing nothing.
“You started to say that your mother gave you something. What was it?”
Without a word, Natalia sprang up and left the room. He heard her open a door, followed by a box being dropped on the ground. Papers shuffling.
She returned with a folded paper, dropping it on the table in front of him.
“This is what she gave you?”
“Yes.”
Carefully, he unfolded it. He placed the black and white photograph on the table and tried to smooth out the creases with his palm. He studied the picture. Three men sitting at a table at an outdoor European café. He rolled the corner of the photo between his fingers as recognition set in. Debeli, albeit a much younger version, but the same eyes, same features, lips curled around a cigarette. Next to him was Tomislav Rukavina in a three-piece suit, in mid-motion, bringing an espresso cup to his mouth. The third man seemed familiar, but Braun couldn’t place him. Crew cut, clean-shaven, wearing sunglasses.
He stared at the photo Natalia had kept for over a decade. Evidence of Tomislav Rukavina and Debeli meeting in the same place. But who was the third man? Another associate? Then why did he seem so familiar?
“Do you know these men?” Braun said.
“I know him.” She pointed at Debeli.
“What about this one?” Braun indicated the unknown man.
“The American?”
“Excuse me?” Braun’s body tensed. An American meeting with Rukavina and Debeli during the war? His mind grasped for recognition, and suddenly, he realized he’d seen him before. Recently.
“When they drove me to the compound,” Natalia said, “he was in the car. He spoke English.”
Braun studied the photograph again, then dropped it as he felt a thud in his gut. He remembered where he’d seen the American. On television. A senator. Walter Flaherty’s boss.
Bart Vance.
43
As soon as Braun was in the taxi heading to the airport, he sent a text message to Nicole Allegri, thumbs moving furiously.
Need to meet. Evidence emerging regarding Pavić.
Highest urgency.
After sending the message, he checked his phone compulsively every few seconds. Was his ringer off? Did he miss her text? Her phone call? He worked his way through emails while waiting at the gate, then checked his phone again. No texts. Try again.
Catching a flight home. Will be on ground in 1hr30.
Must meet immediately. Important.
At moments where the loose pieces of a case were coming together, time dragged. Things couldn’t move quickly enough. The target was always moving, slipping away. Actions had to be quick and decisive.
Braun had found more than enough information about Bart Vance through an online search at the airport to start piecing together how he fit in with Haris Bogdani and the White Tigers. An ex-Navy SEAL who received the Medal of Honor, Vance later founded NightHawk Incorporated in 1991, which grew to be the largest private security firm in the world within three years. NightHawk sent contractors to hot spots around the globe: Sierra Leone, Libya, undisclosed missions in Central Africa and South America. An exposé written in Esquire outed NightHawk’s hiring practices: handpicking ruthless misfits discharged from the US military and French Foreign Legion, primarily. However, before NightHawk had coalesced into a single organization, Vance had a small number of men working contracts for him in Bosnia and Croatia. In fact, it was the financial success in the Balkans that propelled NightHawk.
Now, as he waited at the packed gate for the Lufthansa jet to be deplaned and cleaned, with Nicole ignoring his messages, minutes were being wasted. Unable to sit still, too much energy running through him, he jumped up and strode to the window. Below, men in coveralls and fluorescent vests heaved bags onto conveyor belts, drove fuel trucks, and directed planes. They moved languidly.
He dialed the number to her office. Her secretary answered.
“It’s Robert Braun calling. Does Nicole happen to be in the office?”
She hesitated.
“Robert, I’m sorry, but—”
“I know I don’t work there anymore. But I need to speak with her. Urgently.”
“I’m not supposed to connect you.”
“She’s in her office? Did she get my text messages?”
Silence on the other end.
Braun wiped his brow. He was being shut out. Why?
&nbs
p; “Does she know it’s urgent? Tell her it’s urgent.”
“She knows.”
“And what did she say?”
“That you are no longer part of this office. That you are a liability.” He didn’t doubt that was a direct quote.
He felt things slow to a crawl. He saw what Nicole was doing. She had Pavić. Truth no longer mattered.
“You tell her this: I am getting on a plane now. If there isn’t a message from her on my phone when I land, I’ll find her myself.”
The plane landed roughly, then coasted smoothly towards the gate. After a few dings, the flight attendant informed them that they were now free to use their portable electronic devices.
Braun stared at his smartphone as the signal bars popped up and text messages came through. He read two of them. One came from Juan informing Braun that he had obtained confirmation of the motorcade route between The Hague courthouse and the penitentiary. The second was from Gulo, the master cobbler, informing him that the twenty-one passports were ready.
Nothing from Nicole.
Fuck Nicole.
It was self-preservation. If she didn’t hear or see evidence to the contrary, she could continue living with the notion that Luka Pavić was, in fact, guilty. It was the quickest and easiest way to move on.
He followed the tide of people moving towards the exit, again scanning the emails on his phone.
The frosted glass doors swung open.
And there she was. Arms crossed, wearing a beige skirt and suit jacket. Face perfectly neutral. Perfectly official.
As he walked up to her, she turned, and they strolled side by side towards the far airport exit nearest the parking lot.
“I take it you’re not here to give me a ride home?”
“What was it exactly, Robert, that you didn’t understand about the conditions I laid before you?”
Braun tried to make eye contact with her, but she kept looking straight ahead. Her jaw was tight, nose turned up.
“Let me explain—”
“Because I’m certain that the consequences of not following those conditions were clear.”
“You said there was no evidence of Pavić being innocent but that I could pursue the investigation on my own since I am no longer part of your office.”