by Glenn Meade
She had a blurred recollection of Luka’s face—it came back like a jagged pain. A sweet little boy with an impish smile, a head of dark curls, cupid lips. His left eye cloudy white from birth. How could she ever forget a brother as darling as Luka?
How could she ever forget her mother and father? It seemed impossible that her mind could have blotted out the family she loved.
Rage started to seep in. And a gut-wrenching ache. She felt the anguish of having everything she cherished ripped away from her. She would face her grief in private, but right now she felt her body shake with anger.
“I . . . I have to know what became of Luka and my parents.”
Dr. Leon pursed his lips. “I understand, Carla. But I know Baize and Dan did their utmost. They contacted relief agencies, orphanages, and displacement camps to see if your family survived, but got nowhere. We have to assume the worst. The remains of so many victims were never found. And twenty years is a long time ago now.”
“I don’t care how long ago it was. I need to know.”
“I had a feeling you might say that. Of course, I’d prefer you stepped back a little right now. Take it one day at a time. I don’t want you to overburden yourself.”
“You don’t understand. I feel it’ll destroy me if I don’t find out.” She looked up at Dr. Leon. “Do you think there’s any hope that Luka and my mother and father survived?”
“Honestly, I’ve no idea, Carla, but we have to be realistic.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “After twenty years that may be hoping too much.”
16
* * *
She saw the car in her driveway.
When Carla turned the key in her front door, she found Baize seated at the patio table on the back deck, sipping from a tall iced glass, a dry martini in front of her. She looked nervous. A big, thick manila envelope lay on the table.
“I helped myself, I hope you don’t mind.”
Carla said nothing as she went to stand at the rail. She wrapped her arms around herself. Waves crashed on the beach, a salt tang on the breeze.
“I’m almost afraid to ask how it went with Dr. Leon.” Baize stood. “I’ve been worried sick about you. You’re still in shock, aren’t you?”
“Shock doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m overwhelmed.”
“I thought your appointment must have finished hours ago.”
“It did. I went for a long walk.”
“I tried calling you.”
“I left my phone off. I needed time to think. To figure some things out.”
“You read all of your mom’s diary?”
“Yes.”
Baize put out a hand, gently touched Carla’s back. “I’m so sorry it all had to be kept a secret, sweetheart. But that’s how Dr. Leon wanted it. Dan and I just followed his advice.”
“I’m still angry with you. I can’t help it. And I’m angry at the people who destroyed my family. Angry at the senseless brutality of it all.”
Baize looked out to sea. “I went through all that years ago, Carla. The fury, the questions. I wish I could tell you different but there’s no answer to any of it. Just grief. Deep, numbing grief.”
“I feel I know so little about my mom and dad.”
“What can I tell you?”
“Tell me about the time when they met.”
“We were living in a military base near Frankfurt in Germany where Dan was posted. It wasn’t exactly a happy time for any of us.”
“Why not?”
“Dan and your dad were like oil and water. Dan was a spit-and-polish West Point man. I guess he hoped our son would one day follow in his footsteps. But David was an artist, a dreamer, not the military type.”
“They often argued?”
“Never stopped. That didn’t mean they didn’t love each other. They did.”
Baize offered a sad smile. “I guess they just didn’t realize that the same love that keeps you together sometimes drives you apart.”
She paused. “Neither of them could show their feelings for each other all that easily. The rows got worse that summer when your dad finished art college and couldn’t find a proper job. And then finally everything exploded, like a bomb going off.”
“What happened?”
“Dan felt David was wasting his life and needed a solid career. They fought like pit bulls, screaming and shouting. Until one day out of frustration Dan struck David—something he’d never done before. Struck him and split his lip.”
“What happened?”
“David stormed out, saying he didn’t want to live in his father’s shadow. I begged him to stay but he said he was going to live his own life. The next thing we knew he was driving to the Greek islands. Then six months later David wrote saying he had met and married your mom in Dubrovnik. I knew then we’d lost him for good.”
Baize’s voice trailed off. “He seemed so young at twenty-one, still a boy. For him to leave like that, and make a life for himself so far away from us, it was hard on Dan and me. We loved David so much. But what could we do?”
She wiped her eyes with a paper tissue, sniffled, then picked up her martini, finished it in one swallow, and put down the glass.
“I know you think I sometimes drink too much. I know I do, too. But when you’ve lost your husband and your only son, and most of his family, sometimes cracking open a bottle seems like the only way to deaden the pain. Except it really doesn’t.”
Carla reached out, put a hand on Baize’s. At that moment she felt she understood so much. “Tell me about Vienna.”
“We had three glorious days together. It was wonderful to see you all. You were eight and Luka was walking. You probably don’t remember. I brought you a Barbie doll with a pink dress.”
Carla tried, but couldn’t recall. Dr. Leon had worked his magic too well.
“I remember the silver dollars.”
Baize smiled. “You and Luka were thrilled with them.”
“Did you like my mom when you met her?”
“To be honest, I resented her. It wasn’t easy losing my only child, knowing he’d made a new life for himself in a distant country. But I realized Lana was a good woman, and that she loved David. And her strength and love shine through in her diary. I know you would have been proud of her.”
“You kept in touch afterward?”
Baize nodded. “After Vienna things even mellowed between Dan and your dad. Once the war started and word of the killings got out, Dan sensed big trouble ahead and begged David to leave the country. David wanted to. But then your mom’s father took ill and everything changed.”
Baize paused, pain creasing her face. “Afterward, Dan always felt he was partly responsible for David’s death. He could never forgive himself. He always said if only he hadn’t argued so much, or struck David, maybe things would have worked out differently.”
Baize gave a wistful sigh. “Of course, we never found David’s remains, or your mom’s or Luka’s. Heaven knows we tried to discover what happened to them. The refugee agencies kept lists of survivors but had no knowledge if they lived or died. That wasn’t unusual.”
“Why?”
“There were so many victims. At least five thousand prisoners at the Omarska camp died by execution or ill treatment, or from disease or starvation.”
Baize’s mouth tightened in anger. “Many of them were just young men, or schoolboys.”
“Didn’t they find any remains at that camp?”
“A mass grave was unearthed ten years ago a few hundred yards away by the International Commission of Missing Persons in Sarajevo. However, none of the remains matched our family DNA.”
“They have my DNA?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We sent them your blood sample years ago. They would have been able to confirm your mom’s and Luka’s DNA through you.”
“But they never have.”
“There are so many thousands of victims that have never been found, Carla. Their b
odies buried in secret graves or dumped in places like the mines around Omarska.”
Baize’s eyes glistened. “But at least we found you. That helped ease our pain a little, knowing you survived.”
Carla hugged her.
She finally drew back. “Dr. Leon said something I didn’t understand.”
“What?”
“That your silence came at a heavy price. What did he mean?”
Baize picked up the manila envelope, her face strained.
“Why don’t we go inside? I’ve got something you need to see.”
17
* * *
Baize placed the envelope on the kitchen table.
Carla almost felt the ground shake beneath her. “I’m not sure I can take any more revelations.”
She looked down at the envelope, then at Baize, and shot her a question. What’s inside?
Baize sat. “Jan knew. I told him.”
“Told him what . . . ?”
“The truth about your past.”
“You told him everything?”
“I was afraid, Carla. Afraid of what might happen if your memory ever came back. I felt Jan needed to know what he was getting into before he married you. So I told him as soon as you got engaged.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I was scared about telling him at first. But Jan was a good man. I felt he’d understand. After all, he’d been through his own ordeal.”
“I know now why I felt a connection to him, why the pain in his music spoke to me. What did Jan say?”
“That knowing your past made him love you all the more.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Who else knew?”
“Only Paul. I knew Jan and his brother were close and always confided in each other. So I figured it was best to tell them both. That way it would make it easier for Jan. He’d have someone to talk to about it if he needed to, and not feel as if he was breaking a confidence.”
Baize added, “I made only one condition: that they never divulge our talk to you or to anyone else. What’s wrong?”
Carla shook her head and felt a catch in her throat. Jan knew. So that’s why he was hunting down Mila Shavik. “I . . . I regret certain things I said to Jan.”
“Like?”
She closed her eyes. “I recall once telling him during an argument that he lived in an ivory tower. That he didn’t really care about others.”
Baize didn’t answer.
“I even accused him recently of spending more time away on concert tours than I felt he needed to.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just smiled, the way Jan always did. And told me he loved me and always would. I know now he cared. I know that he’d have laid down his life for me.”
Her eyes wet, Carla opened her mouth to speak again, and then closed it. She avoided the temptation to explain about Jan’s death. Maybe the less Baize knew the better.
“What’s in the envelope?”
“When Dr. Leon treated you as a child, he had us remove all the snapshots we had of David and your mom from around the house. Except for the single photograph in your room.”
“He was afraid they might spark my memory?”
“Yes.”
“It’s why you never spoke about Luka, or displayed his photograph. Isn’t it?”
“You and he were so close. We were afraid even if you saw too many images from your past all the pain would come back. The less said the better.”
Baize opened the envelope. “All the pictures Dan and I had—of David growing up, and the ones he sent us over the years, of his life with you and your mom and Luka. I kept them hidden from you. It wasn’t easy keeping silent for over twenty years. But that’s how it had to be.”
She tilted the envelope and dozens of images in different shapes and sizes and colors cascaded out like precious jewels onto the table.
Carla saw some of her father—as a child, wet-haired on a beach, looking no more than five, and wearing blowup red plastic armbands, a grin on his face.
Another as a toddler in his parents’ arms. Another about seven, making his Communion, and later as an awkward teen. In all of them that same wonderful lopsided smile she remembered.
She sifted through the other snapshots. It was as if they recorded every kiss and hug and cherished moment of her childhood.
She saw images of her on her father’s lap, his arm around her mother, holding a plump-faced Luka, all of them next to an old white Volkswagen. On the back of the snapshot it said: “Dubrovnik beach.”
In another, Carla was leaning in front of the bonnet, her head tilted toward her mother, locking her in an embrace. One more of her father laughing as he planted a kiss on her forehead. In yet another, she was touching noses with a smiling Luka.
There were lots of photographs of her father painting, an easel in front of him. Others of them all seated at dinner outside a restaurant, and written in felt pen at the bottom it said, “ ’Dinner at Mr. Banda’s. Food wonderful! Memories irreplaceable!’ ”
But of course photographs only offered a glimpse, and not the whole truth. They never captured the true spirit of the moment, the soul behind the image, or the real people behind the smiles.
They didn’t capture the real Luka, the beautiful little boy who liked to be chased and tickled, and who was always ready to make mischief. No more than they captured the tender love behind her father’s kisses, or the devoted worship in her mother’s embrace.
But these photographs were all she had. The only keys she possessed to her past—the life that was long hidden from her. They were also a trigger, and this time she didn’t have to struggle to recall. Her mind opened like a floodgate, as Dr. Leon predicted.
A surge of forgotten childhood memories raged through her mind like wildfire, with no order or sense to them.
An evening she spent in the hospital with her father, as he paced anxiously up and down awaiting news of Luka’s birth. She remembered something that made her giggle—her father so nervous that he accepted a cigarette from another expectant father, but lit the wrong end, the filter tip going up in flames.
A time she hid in a hall closet and saw her father and mother argue, over money—the only time she recalled them ever arguing—and then when their argument was spent, she saw them kiss with such ferocity that Carla thought they would suffocate one another.
It made her cry out and burst from the closet, but it made her parents laugh as they hugged her.
Another day. A wondrous one. Her mother leading her and Luka down to the sea the first summer Luka began to walk.
They wore their bathing suits and she remembered the sparkle in her mother’s eyes, as if she savored the sheer delight and the pleasure and awe of being alive and with her children.
Her mother held their hands as they ran down to the waves, rushing together into the blue sea, all of them scooping out armfuls of cool water and whooping with joy.
Overcome, she looked up.
It felt all too much.
In Baize’s eyes she saw her own torment mirrored.
These were not just photographs and memories; these were the lives of her beloved family, their existence savagely ended by evil men.
“I . . . I know I loved them. Loved them so much.”
“We both did, Carla.”
And then Baize’s arms were around her, hugging her close, rocking her, offering her a warm, soft place to fall.
18
* * *
BELGRADE
The giant Lufthansa Airbus A340 that took off from JFK Airport earlier that Friday evening powered its way across the Atlantic to its final destination in Frankfurt, Germany.
The stocky, middle-aged man wearing an expensive tailored suit who was seated comfortably in business-class seat 11A was booked on an onward connection to Belgrade. Carrying only a single piece of overnight luggage, he stayed awake all through the flight, clutching a locked briefcase that ne
ver left his sight, for it contained a priceless cargo.
When the Airbus landed in Frankfurt at 8 a.m. Saturday, within two hours the man was aboard his connecting flight. Only two photographs existed of the passenger in Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France.
One was taken while he was in a Belgrade prison serving seven years for manslaughter, and for membership in an organized crime gang. It showed a bull-necked, dark-haired young man of twenty-six, arrogant, and confident. His broken nose and slit of a mouth suggested that he wasn’t someone to be crossed.
The second Interpol photograph was a grainy image taken five years later, when he was a major serving in the Serb paramilitary killing squads. No one who saw him now would recognize the man in the Interpol photographs.
More than twenty years had passed, and he was almost completely bald. He was fifty pounds heavier, and plastic surgery had restructured his chin, fixed his boxer’s nose, and given him an eye-lift. His passport photo matched his new appearance and was a legitimate Austrian document, supplied by a Viennese official in return for a generous bribe.
The official had little choice—a refusal meant he would have ended up floating dead in the Danube.
The name in the document identified its owner as Bruno Neumann, which was a kind of poor joke really, for in English Neumann means “new man.” The name was an alias—the passenger was in fact a member of the Serb mafia, one of the most feared and widespread organized crime groups in the world.
In reality, he was Boris Arkov, the only son of Ivan Arkov, the present head of the Arkov clan, one of a half-dozen notorious crime families that ran Yugoslavia’s underworld.
Never endowed with a keen intelligence, Arkov’s son preferred to use brute force, cunning, and violence.
Beginning with the cigarette, oil, and drug smuggling operations his father ran in the late 1980s with ruthless efficiency, Boris Arkov became a trusted lieutenant to his father and knew the absolute importance to the clan of kanun—the mafia code of loyalty—and besa, secrecy, and he adhered to both rigidly.