by Tony Jones
Andric shook his hand and Marin felt calluses in his hard, dry grip.
‘What a privilege for you,’ he said, eyes like probing searchlights. ‘You’re lucky to have a father such as this. Katich—that is a name to be proud of.’
Marin nodded, uneasy under the man’s scrutiny and too embarrassed to respond.
When Ivo drifted off to greet someone else, Andric leaned in close to Marin. ‘The ones who were there, like your father,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘Can you imagine it? To have seen the Poglavnik, to have stood as close to him as we are standing now. To have heard him speak, to have worn the uniform. What a time to live through! Does your father talk to you about those days?’
The eyes of Ambroz Andric were shining with something Marin couldn’t quite grasp.
‘He doesn’t say much about that. Many things, but not that,’ he told Andric, and the man gifted him with a reassuring smile.
‘One day he will tell you everything. When you are ready.’
Marin wanted to ask him more, but at that moment they were called to take their seats. Petar was there already in the front row. Next to him was a woman with a beehive hairdo, Astrid Capan, who had been active in the movement for many years with her husband. Marin wondered where he was tonight. She was wearing a shimmery gown and lots of make-up.
Marin sat down next to his brother. Even from one seat away he caught wafts of Mrs Capan’s perfume. Then his father came and took the spare seat next to her and Marin felt a frisson of something pass between them.
On stage the music was starting up, with a massed string band of young kids in national costume. The boys in white smocks with ballooning sleeves and waistcoats hand-sewn by their mothers, the girls in long white dresses embroidered with patterns of spring flowers. Marin didn’t envy them. He knew what it was like to be dressed up as a village boy. The musicians were strumming their long-necked tamburitza and the wall of sound evoked in the crowd a joyous sentiment. Marin turned and saw that his father’s eyes were moist.
Dancers sprang out on to the stage, their boots hitting the wooden floor in a hard rhythm, and Ivo started clapping along. His face was infused with the exuberance that surged through the crowd, until everyone was clapping and stamping their feet. Then there was a burst of activity at the back of the hall as, through the doorways on either side, came flag-bearers leading ranks of costumed youths down the aisles towards the stage. They held high the tricolour flag of the NDH, emblazoned with the red and white chequerboard. The sight of this beloved symbol broke the clapping rhythm and an ecstatic roar rose up.
Ivo jumped to his feet, clapping wildly, and soon Marin too felt compelled to stand. His father’s face glistened with tears. Everyone was now on their feet as the flag-bearers, the tallest and best-looking young men and women, swept past them and up on to the stage. High above, stretching across the ornate fan of the grand organ’s dormant pipes, was a banner proclaiming:
ZIVJELA HRVATSKA! ZIVIO! DESETI TRANANJ
LONG LIVE CROATIA! HURRAY! THE 10th OF APRIL
On one side of the banner was a large portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, and on the other a huge photograph of the Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic, founder of the Ustasha and NDH.
God save them! That was what Marin was told to say if anyone asked. God save our gracious Queen. Long live our noble Queen. And God save our noble Poglavnik, long to reign over us. God save them both!
None of them—not Ivo Katich, nor his friends and followers, nor the special guest politicians from the Liberal Party, nor the young musicians and dancers, nor their cheering parents—thought for a moment that this juxtaposition of Queen and Poglavnik implied any disrespect. They all accepted, without question, that the allegations against Pavelic—the war crimes set out in the vicious, lying indictment of the Nuremberg Trials—were all built on evidence fabricated by the communists and on witnesses suborned by Tito’s agents.
The celebration proceeded with performances and speeches. A small girl recited an Ode to the Poglavnik; another sang a song she had written herself to honour the great man.
Before he was ready, it was Marin’s turn to speak. He walked stiff-legged to the lectern. It was draped with the chequerboard flag and behind it an image had been projected on to a large white screen. It was the Poglavnik, noble and resolute in his peaked hat, in the black uniform of the supreme commander of the Ustasha.
Marin spoke in English for the benefit of the visiting dignitaries. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and special guests, it is a pleasure to see you all here on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the state we hold so dear. Although we love our adopted country Australia, the Croatian homeland lives always in our hearts.
‘It was twenty-five years ago today, 1941 in Zagreb, that Archbishop Stepinac sent a special message to all his priests: “The times are such that it is no longer the tongue that speaks but the blood with its mysterious links to the country in which we have seen the light of God.”
‘The archbishop’s words were read out in every church in the Independent State of Croatia. I am only a young man and I was born here in Australia, but even so I can understand what the archbishop meant because my own blood is still linked to Croatia. It is mysterious, but it is real.’
When Marin paused, a rumble of applause filled the silence. Then it stuttered and died as he started again.
‘We all know the painful truth that Croatia is not free today. But we can still dream that day will come again just as Ante Pavelic dreamed it would come. He had the will to make it happen. The army he built to free Croatia he called the Ustasha. For those who don’t know, you can translate it as “insurgent”, or “revolutionary”. And that is what they were—revolutionaries for independence, in the same way that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States were revolutionaries. General Washington took up arms against an oppressive English king to fight for their independence. Ante Pavelic took up arms against an oppressive Serbian king to fight for ours.’
Here Marin paused again and the response of the crowd was like rolling thunder, with many shouts of support. He glanced behind him and saw that the projected image had changed to marching ranks of Croatian soldiers. He looked down from the stage at his father and saw he was smiling up at him. Not just smiling—Ivo was in tears again, unable to contain his emotions.
Marin drew his speech to a close. ‘Clearly the Ustasha was not a fascist organisation. It was a revolutionary movement organised as a military force. The Ustasha’s aim was military. The end of Serbian rule over Croatia, and the protection and preservation of the Croatian national state.’
Marin saw the nods of approval in the crowd for this line of thinking. With his speech finished, he proclaimed the famous cry: ‘ZA DOM, SPREMNI!’ FOR THE HOMELAND, READY!
Another great cheer came from the audience and a surge of fearsome pride ran through Marin’s body like an electric charge. Galvanised, he called out again: ‘ZA DOM!’
And there came from the crowd the longed-for response: ‘SPREMNI!!’
Men rose to their feet and Marin felt a delicious power that could move mountains.
‘ZA DOM!’ he called again.
‘SPREMNI!!’
A few of the men flung up their right arms. Marin saw that Ambroz Andric was one of them, his stiff-armed salute mirroring the old newsreels. Marin was shocked to have produced this reaction, but then the arms dropped as quickly as they had come up.
Then those men still on their feet were clapping and singing what was immediately recognisable as the Ustasha fighting song. It was a rousing anthem about dying for the homeland, about blood and sacrifice. Soon everyone was on their feet—men, women and children, clapping and singing along.
And even the Liberal politicians in the front row, somewhat bewildered, rose and joined in.
11.
Anna Rosen woke to the usual traffic noise from Glebe Point Road. Her abhorrence of airless rooms meant she’d left the windows wide open and a strong bree
ze was blowing sheets of typed paper off the desk. She heard them fluttering up one by one and became fully awake.
‘Shit!’
She jumped out of bed, ran to the desk, thumped a heavy bust of Trotsky on to the pile and then gathered up the loose sheets from the floor, sorting them back into order before also putting them under the commissar’s weighty protection. The bust was a fine-featured bronze with rimmed oval specs, a neat, pointed beard, a mandarin collar, the wild hair swept back from a high, smooth forehead. It was a present from Pierre that Anna had always suspected had been liberated from the bourgeois home of a former believer. She had never asked after its provenance, but she knew that, if pressed, Pierre would explain away the theft as a justifiable act of redistribution.
Meeting Trotsky’s implacable gaze, Anna was suddenly aware of her own nakedness. She turned him to face the bookcase, closed the window and sat in the captain’s chair, feeling the coolness of the black leather against her flesh. When she spun slowly around to face the desk, the chair pitched and rolled on its springs as if she really were at sea.
There was a china cup half-full of cold coffee next to the typewriter. She rolled out the typed page still in the machine and read it, sipping the coffee and stopping from time to time to make corrections with a pencil. She was now working hard to turn her research on Ivo Katich’s eventful life into a book, and it was starting to take shape.
Her radio documentary ten days ago had revealed his role in establishing a terrorist organisation in Australia, and in funding and orchestrating the Bosnian incursion. It had sketched out his wartime past in the Ustasha and implicated him in war crimes, alleging the complicity of various security services in facilitating his immigration to Australia.
Anna thought about the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was where she had first learned of Ivo’s existence. It deserved its own chapter, if she had the courage to put herself into the story.
From deep in the house a phone began to ring. Anna was about to throw on a robe and run to answer it when it stopped.
Pierre’s voice boomed down the hallway. ‘Anna,’ he shouted. ‘It’s for you. Wake up!’
A few moments later he banged on her door.
‘It’s one of your spooky fwiends on the phone,’ he began. But before she could respond, he pushed the door open and stuck his head in, just as she spun the chair around from facing the desk.
‘Oh! Whooops!’
When Pierre started laughing, Anna jumped up and threw a cushion at him. ‘Piss off, you perve!’
‘Kinky!’ he managed to say before ducking back behind the door. ‘Christine Keeler, eat your heart out!’ he cried.
Anna grabbed her kimono, wrapped herself in it and stomped into the corridor. ‘How about knocking?’ she said, pushing past Pierre.
‘I did. I did.’
‘And came straight in.’
Pierre tried to conjure a crestfallen look but quickly gave up. ‘Sorry about that, but I will have that mental picture forever.’
Anna let it go. ‘You can make me a coffee in return.’
In the living room Anna sat at the phone table and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello. Sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘Anna?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Al Sharp, I got your message.’
‘Al, thanks for calling back. Can you talk now?’
‘Not on the phone,’ Sharp said. ‘That café we met at before. Can you be there in half an hour?’
‘I can.’
‘See you there,’ he said and hung up.
Anna dressed quickly and cycled across town. She chained her bike outside the Piccolo, both front and back wheels. It was the Cross, after all. She was early, but Al Sharp was already there, stirring sugar into a cappuccino, his large body crammed into a corner table from which he could see anyone who came into the café.
Anna had known Sharp since his ASIO days, a strangely intimate connection born out of his surveillance of her. It was the secret intimacy of the peeping Tom or the stalker, but she forgave him for it. She was grateful he’d never attempted to translate that intimacy into something real; perhaps she had been saved from embarrassment by his natural reticence.
During the years she had known him, Sharp’s physical shape had changed. He’d gone from athletic to corpulent, the result of a debilitating back injury. She knew him well enough to know when the pain was bothering him. It blunted his mordant wit.
Anna ordered coffee and sat opposite him. He gave her a curt nod.
‘Your radio piece was good, very strong,’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Definitely thrown a cat among the pigeons. The government is on the back foot, skittish as hell. Naturally there’s an investigation into how you got hold of the internal memo and the report to the A-G by the Commonwealth Police. How did you get it, by the way? That was a surprise.’
‘You’re not my only source.’
‘No, well … That’s good, I suppose. It spreads the risk. I expected the leak investigation, of course, but it means we have to be extremely careful now.’
‘Thanks, Al. They won’t find out anything from me.’
‘You destroyed any notes which might identify me?’
‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘Exactly as we agreed.’
Sharp gave her a searching look. ‘Good,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t stay long. Ask your questions.’
‘How’s your back?’
‘It’s fucked.’ He winced. ‘I’m on hydrocodone pills.’
‘That’s a narcotic.’
‘Yeah, so I’m trying not to take them.’
‘Give them to me if you don’t want them.’
Sharp rolled his eyes. ‘I really do know too much about you,’ he said. ‘Next question?’
‘You’re on the bombing investigation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any leads?’
‘Nothing yet. Watching the usual suspects.’
‘Ivo Katich?’
‘What do you think? He’s had the press camped outside his house all week.’
‘I’ve seen him on camera, lying through his teeth. I was wondering if you got more out of him.’
Sharp laughed at that. ‘He’s clammed up. Refusing to say a thing.’
Anna played the next card cautiously. ‘Do you know where his sons are?’
‘Marin, we suspect, is still out of the country.’ Sharp paused to watch her reaction. ‘We suspect he may have been part of the Bosnian incursion, but we’ve no proof. What about you? What have you heard?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing at all. If he was in Bosnia, would you get confirmation from the Yugoslavians?’
‘Officially the Yugos aren’t saying anything at all. But Marin is an Australian citizen. If they were holding him, they probably wouldn’t tell us.’
‘Would they tell you if he’d been killed?’
‘They’ve passed on the names of eleven dead Australians. He’s not on that list.’
Anna felt a wave of relief that made her legs go weak. She fought to control her face. Vittorio put an espresso in front of her and she was thankful for the distraction. She sipped at it, steadying herself before responding.
‘How reliable was the intelligence that put him in Bosnia?’
‘It came from the Germans,’ Sharp said. ‘But it wasn’t definitive. We’ve asked for confirmation, but nothing so far.’
‘What about his brother, Petar?’
Sharp shook his head. ‘Damaged goods, that one,’ he said ruefully. ‘He definitely didn’t go to Bosnia.’ Sharp delivered a tight summary. ‘Mental issues. Drugs and alcohol. Smack addict, the word is. We had a look at him for the Sydney bombings, but the strong feeling is he’s too fucked up. That job required steady nerves.’
‘You had a look at him?’ Anna repeated. ‘So where is he now?’
‘Seems that old man Ivo sent him to the bush to dry out.’ Sharp opened his notebook and flicked through it. ‘South Coast, near Eden. Plac
e called Khandalah. That’s all I’ve got. We had a surveillance team down there for a while. Pulled out now. No phone there. Pretty basic.’
‘Is he alone?’
‘He was.’
‘Isn’t that odd?’
‘Petar’s not great company, by all accounts. He was interviewed, of course. By Ray Sullivan. Detective sergeant, one of our best. Incoherent, he reckons, a mumbling wreck. You thinking of going down there?’
‘I might,’ she admitted.
Sharp slowly drank his coffee. Tapping out a cigarette, he offered her one, but she declined. He lit up, considerately blowing smoke away from her.
‘Well, he sounds like a fruitcake. You’ll have to handle him with extreme care. I wouldn’t go alone, if I were you. Listen, I’ve got to get going. Send me a message if you pick up anything, will you?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Anything else on this Khandalah place?’
‘It’s very remote, the property’s on a river that comes out at Twofold Bay. That’s really all I’ve got. I’m sure you’ll find it if you need to. Good luck with that.’
Sharp nodded again, stood up gingerly and left without another word.
*
It took only a few calls for Anna to get a lead on Khandalah. A realtor in Eden knew the place and gave her detailed directions on how to get there. Its exotic name came from an Indian hill station south of Bombay, which struck her as a strange choice for a Croat hideaway.
Marin had talked about spending summers on the South Coast, but she had never imagined anything like a misty, green colonial hill station. He had always been vague, never named it. Of course she knew now that this was only one of his many secrets.
Anna called McHugh to tell him of this breakthrough and he agreed that Petar Katich was the best lead they had, if she could get him to talk. The travel office booked a room for her at the pretentiously named Hotel Australasia in Eden. When she rang the front desk, the manager—‘Call me Dave’—told her that she should factor in seven or eight hours for the journey by car. He recommended she take the inland route via the Monaro Plains, along the foothills of the Snowy Mountains to Cooma, and then down Brown Mountain to the Coast. The restaurant would be closed by the time she got there, but he promised her a late supper.