“Tell us what we want to know. Then you can speak with your embassy.”
“I’d like to—”
“UNMIK? Are you with UNMIK?” UNMIK is the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which is headquartered in Pristina, the capital. UNMIK has the next-to-impossible task of trying to administrate the lawless province.
I said, “I can only give you my name, rank—”
“Cut the crap, asshole! I don’t want this name, rank, and serial number bullshit.”
She looked at Nadaj, said something in Albanian, obviously letting him know I wasn’t being cooperative enough. Nadaj pointed toward me, made an upward movement with his fist. When she turned back to me, she had a strange smile on her face. “You don’t answer our questions, we can make you wish you did.” She stepped forward and aimed a kick with a muddy boot that struck against the inside of my thigh. “Next time I don’t miss. And then I cut them off. You won’t be able to get it up after that. It’ll just hang there.” She sneered. “No matter who the bitch is, it’ll just hang there. You fuckin’ understand me?”
I did understand her—well enough to know I was in a very bad situation. I made an enormous mental effort not to think about just how bad it was.
“Do you understand me?”
“I understand, but I don’t see why I can’t speak with the American Embassy.”
Ignoring my comment, she said, “You can’t be with UNMIK. They all wear blue uniforms and those stupid blue helmets. They’re all cowards. They let Muslim people die in Srebrenica.” She seemed to be working herself into a frenzy. “Thousands of people, men and boys, some just twelve years old, slaughtered like cattle. We’ll never forget that!”
I knew what she was talking about. When I was in Bosnia, I’d gone to Srebrenica, an old mining city, where I helped keep the lid on a memorial celebration for slain Muslims that some of our people thought might get out of hand. Before that, the government had given me a tenday course in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, but that was a while ago, and I could only guess at what these people were saying. The last thing I could admit was that we were here on our own. There was a possibility, however slight, that they might think twice before killing a military member of KFOR. If they tumbled to the real situation, I figured I’d be dead before sunup.
“Are you with KFOR? Working for someone else? Answer!”
Definitely the excitable type. When I again mentioned the American Embassy, she spoke loudly to Nadaj, who shook his head.
Then the guy with the garlicky breath and the white do-rag on his head made a fist and shouted something at me. He seemed to have solved the Leatherman, and was acting as if he’d just invented the telephone or the internal combustion engine. If the Albanian language has the equivalent of “Eureka!” he was shouting it. He stood up from the cot, held up the Leatherman, then snapped out the knife blade and made a sawing motion. When the woman said something, they all started laughing.
Turning to me, she said, “Quemal is called by the people in his village ‘Vrasës.’ Do you know what that means?”
I frowned, recalling only that the word had something to do with killing.
When I shrugged, she said, “Killer or assassin.” She smiled. “Quemal is known as ‘The Assassin’ because he killed the mayor of his village when the mayor insulted his sister.”
Before I could reply, Quemal started jabbering again. When the woman said something, they again laughed.
“Quemal says in the village when they cut off someone’s balls, he then has to eat them. I told him, with you no problem. Americans will eat anything that has ketchup on it.”
“How would you know?” I said.
She smirked. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“You speak good English.” I figured some flattery couldn’t hurt. And for understandable reasons, I was doing my best to change the subject.
The three guys were staring at me intently, trying to pick up what we were saying. There was a rickety wooden table at the center of the room, and Nadaj sat down at it, leaned forward, and said something to the woman. “Ramush says the people of Kosovo are fighting for their independence. He says in this country people die for what they believe. Not like America, where all the people want is to wear jeans and listen to pop music. He says one more person in a grave in Kosovo won’t matter to anyone.”
Although I assumed I was the “one more person” Ramush had in mind, I pushed that thought out of my mind. My left shoulder felt like it was dislocated. My mouth was full of blood. My head was pounding. I wondered what she’d say if I asked her for some Tylenol. Probably become even more hysterical.
“I’m asking again. Tell us who sent you.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “You think Quemal isn’t serious?” She shouted at the guy on the bed, who stood up, pounded his chest, and shouted “Quemal Vrasës.” Then he stepped forward, again snapped open the Leather-man, and began the sawing motion. I felt a wave of nausea, as though I might have to heave then and there.
Placing her hand on his shoulder, the woman pulled him back, then, turning back to me, she spoke quietly. “Listen, Alex Klear. You don’t belong in the Balkans. Being an American won’t help you here. Your only hope is you tell us who sent you here, and why.”
I could agree with her that I didn’t belong in the Balkans, and I couldn’t help questioning the series of events that had landed me in this situation. The irony was, I couldn’t answer her question. I didn’t know who wanted Nadaj. Or why they wanted him. I was as curious about that as they were.
Still trying to change the subject, I asked how she’d learned English.
“You know where Bridgeport is? I lived there for three years, almost.” When she again smirked, I saw she was missing a couple of teeth, a fact that definitely made her less attractive, and another reminder of how far behind the rest of Europe this country is. “My name is Viktoria. In the States they called me Vickie.”
Ramush said something, and Vickie nodded. “How did you know where to find us?”
When I didn’t answer, Vickie said, “You people aren’t as smart as you think you are. We knew you were watching us.”
That at least explained how they were able to grab me. I wondered about Angel and Scott, my two partners in this undertaking. I felt a sinking sensation as I realized that if they were dead I was as good as dead too. Buck was our contact, but none of us knew where he was. At the CIA station in Skopje? At Camp Bondsteel? Quite possibly, he was still back in D.C. Even if Angel and Scott were alive, they wouldn’t know where I was. And with the van so far away, they couldn’t have followed us.
I watched warily as the four of them talked. Quemal stood up from the cot, crossed the room, pushed back the table, and pulled open a heavy trapdoor in the floor. From where I was sitting, I could see wooden steps leading down to a small crawl space.
Vickie told me to stand up. Then Nadaj motioned to me to put my hands back behind my head.
When I again didn’t react fast enough to suit him, he aimed his fist at my gut. I was ready this time. I sidestepped and swung, catching him solidly on the side of the head, hitting him hard enough to stagger him. He looked surprised, then angry. He barked something at the other two guys, who came at me in a rush. I got in a couple of good shots before they got hold of me, each of them hanging on to an arm. With Nadaj pounding me, I doubled up. Then something came crashing down hard on the back of my neck. When I was down on my knees, I got a kick in the face from Quemal, ‘The Assassin.’” A couple of them dragged me toward the open trapdoor.
Vickie’s laughter was more like a cackle, and over the ringing in my ears I heard her voice. “That’s where you’re spending the rest of the night, Alex. The rats and spiders will be good company.”
I went down into the hole headfirst, tumbling down the wooden steps, my arms landing hard in a pile of junk, everything from broken glass to orange rinds and coffee grounds. When I tried moving my hands, I found myself with a fistful of human excrement. Someone dropped the door with a loud bang, a soun
d that made me think of a coffin lid being slammed shut. The earth beneath the house was damp and cold and stank as badly as anything I’ve ever smelled in my life. Someone had done a half-baked job of shoring up the dirt walls, which were crumbling and crumbled a little more every time I moved, and made me think that a too-sudden move might result in me burying myself alive. Except for a slant of light coming through a crack in the floor, it was pitch black. I felt pains shooting through my arms and back. There was hardly any room to move.
Above me in the room, the woman said something to her friends and they all laughed. Mixed in with the Albanian, I thought I heard the word “ketchup.”
Chapter 2
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
I may have dozed during the night, but I never really slept. The lack of circulation and the dampness had caused all my joints to ache. Maybe the worst pain was in my head, where one of them, probably Quemal, had caught me with a boot. I could taste blood in my mouth. I suppose I spent four or five hours in the hole before I heard the tinny sound of a cheap radio, someone playing pop music, Albanian-style. After a while, the music was interrupted by a guy chattering excitedly, some kind of Albanian language newscast. In Kosovo, what passes for news is such transparent propaganda no one even pretends to believe it.
For maybe the third or fourth time, I threw up.
After they’d been moving around and talking for about an hour, things became quiet. Without my watch, I found it hard to gauge time. I heard a car engine turn over. A short while later, Nadaj pulled open the trapdoor. As I looked up, he pointed an automatic pistol at me and shouted something. He had a bandolier over his shoulder. As I staggered up out of the hole, he kept his weapon pointed in my direction. He needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t in shape to make any sudden moves.
But the weapon in his hand definitely caught my eye—a 9mm machine pistol, an MP5. So far as I knew, these were used exclusively by Special Forces, and were favored by “special ops” people in Afghanistan. I wondered how these characters could have gotten their hands on one of those babies.
I was aware how filthy my coveralls were, caked with mud and smeared with every kind of filth. I felt lightheaded, and not sure of what to do, I just stood there. Finally, the woman told me to sit down at the table with my hands out in front of me. In the center of the table was a partially filled bottle of water and a wormy-looking apple. She took out my passport, flipped through it, then smiled, obviously enjoying her little power trip.
“We know why you’re here, Alex Klear.” When she nodded in the direction of Nadaj, something told me the two of them were lovers. If they were, they deserved one another. “You people wanted Ramush. You wanted to grab him and take him back. Right?”
Still playing dumb, I frowned. “Ramush?”
“We don’t think you’re with KFOR. You’re not military. Is that right?”
I was thirsty and tried not to look at the water. This character with the bandolier slung over his shoulder sitting opposite me at the table was definitely the individual in the pictures we’d been shown, all of which were in the glove compartment of our van. I told myself that this was going to have a good ending. I also told myself I’d gotten out of other scrapes, some of them worse than this one. I told myself I’d get out of here one way or another.
But while I’d been in some tight scrapes, I’d never before been so dumb as to let myself become a prisoner.
I was close to the point where I was running short on optimism. The danger in black operations of this kind is that you don’t have fallback. For all we knew, Buck Romero, the guy who’d organized the Nadaj rendition, was still in the States. He’d given us a number to call in case of an emergency, but I had to wonder whether KFOR, even assuming Angel and Scott reached someone in Camp Bondsteel, would lift a finger to get me out. The military would only regard us as a bunch of bounty hunters, and now that I thought about it, who could blame them?
Nadaj fixed me with a stare, and just having to look at him up close was enough to shake my confidence a little more. Behind his unkempt curly hair, deep-set brown eyes, and black beard, there was a crafty, malicious look, the look of someone who can smell weakness and will always go for your jugular. I already knew Nadaj was good at sucker punches. The truth was, I was surprised that I was still alive.
“If not Ramush, what then? You tell us, you get something to eat and drink.” Vickie tossed my passport onto the table.
I said, “Give me something to eat first, Vickie. Then we can talk.” My voice sounded strange. The throbbing ache in my head was making me dizzy, and the room was beginning to spin.
She shook her head. “We know you’re not with KFOR. You’d have ID.”
“I want to speak with someone at the American embassy.”
“You’d have one of those badges. Am I right?”
“I’m thirsty.” I tried not to sound as tired as I felt.
She hesitated, glanced at Nadaj, then pushed the water and the apple in my direction. Drinking the water in Kosovo can be a ticket to a case of dysentery, but I was thirsty and I took a couple of sips anyway. When I started gnawing on the apple, I became aware of my loose teeth.
“Fadilj and Quemal will be back in an hour. You’re going to wish you talked with me, Alex.”
“Sure, Vickie.” I took another bite out of the apple. Despite the worms, it was sweet, tasted good. I said, “Did you like America?”
Vickie looked at Nadaj and said something. When he laughed, she looked back at me. “Bridgeport’s a shithole. I worked in a furniture factory. All day long I glued pieces of wood together. I wore a mask. I got less than fifty dollars every day to take home.”
“That’s more than you can make in a month in Kosovo, Vickie. And you don’t have to give half to a warlord.”
“I gave it to a landlord, asshole. My apartment was six hundred dollars, more. The landlord was a son of a bitch, and he kept the heat turned off. And your goddamned supermarkets charged for food like—”
“You should’ve gotten a green card. You could’ve earned more.”
“I had a goddamned green card, asshole. You people and your stupid green cards. I hate your fuckin’ goddamned country!”
Before I could say how much we Americans love our country, Nadaj said something and she nodded. “Ramush wants to know if you know about Afghanistan.”
“What about it?”
“About what happened there.” When I shrugged, she said, “Answer! Do you know what happened there?”
I shook my head, and Nadaj started talking excitedly, gesturing with his left hand, the hand without the gun. He shouted something at me, leaning over the table, sticking his dumb face in front of mine. I wondered what had gotten him so excited. Vickie started talking to him, as though she was trying to quiet him down.
“Ramush is unhappy with you, Alex Klear. He wants to know who sent you. He wants to know how many of you were back there. He thinks you know about Afghanistan. He knows you were after him.”
Like I say, I couldn’t have told Ramush exactly who sent me since I didn’t quite know myself. I had no idea why they were asking about Afghanistan. This operation had been shrouded in mystery from the beginning.
Nadaj was still talking, but now he had his knife out. I became aware of my pounding heart. The knife had a curved black handle, a shiny steel blade, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. He stuck it in front of my face and kept it there for maybe a minute. The room started spinning again. As Vickie continued to talk with Nadaj, he calmed down. When he finally put the knife away, I breathed a shade easier.
“You just had a close call, Alex. Ramush says in his village the custom is to punish an uncooperative person by cutting off his nose. Ramush says without a nose you would be willing to talk. He says then you would tell the truth. He still wants to know who sent you.” She paused, looked at Nadaj, who was smiling and nodding like the village idiot.
How could I have been so dumb as to fall into the clutches of people like this?
/> “I think you should tell us,” she said. She picked up my passport. “Why is there no entry stamp? How did you get into this country?”
I tried not to look at Nadaj, who I’d decided was a total creep. I could have told her that I got the passport, my wristwatch, and the Leatherman from Buck Romero, the guy who sent us off on this little expedition. I could have said that we flew into Skopje, in Macedonia, and bypassed the customs officials at the border by paying them money. It was somebody’s thinking that there shouldn’t be any official record of our having been in Kosovo.
Since I couldn’t say any of these things, I continued to play dumb. While Vickie turned the pages of my passport and spoke with Nadaj, I heard the sound of a car. The driver was gunning the motor, and it was working hard to get up the hill. In Kosovo, it’s not generally understood that you have to keep a car’s engine tuned for it to run efficiently. Even when it is understood, there aren’t any tools or timing lights around to do the job. A civil affairs officer, a woman with a lot of experience in these parts, once told me that in Kosovo the people are obsessed by only one thing—their struggle for independence. When they talk about politics, they always end up discussing some battle they fought with the Serbs in the 1300s. Efficient engines are way down the list in importance.
Kosovo ain’t America. Believe me.
A few minutes later, Quemal and Fadilj pushed their way in through the narrow door, both of them talking a blue streak. Fadilj had a basketful of food, which he set down on the table and which Nadaj immediately began examining. Within seconds, he had a box of cookies open and was stuffing the contents into his mouth, indifferent to the crumbs falling into his beard. Quemal, I noticed, was carrying a camcorder.
Fadilj pointed at me and laughed.
The worst of it was, it was probably my euros that had bought the camcorder. I had an idea I knew what it was for. And I now knew why Vickie had been able to talk Nadaj out of cutting up my face. They wanted me to look pretty. I also had an idea that I’d remain alive only for as long as I was useful to them.
The Rendition Page 2