by Glenn Meade
Decades had passed, yet her searches on the Internet revealed that Mila Shavik and many of the guards who served in the camp were never caught.
When she googled Shavik she had found several references to him.
Wanted by the International Court of Justice in The Hague to face charges for numerous war crimes and abetting ethnic cleansing, it seems that he disappeared in the final weeks of the war.
A journalist with the Times of London claimed that a Serb underworld contact suggested Shavik was given a new identity and spirited abroad, like a number of other top Serb mafia war criminals. An article translated from Der Spiegel speculated that Shavik died in Belgrade a year after the war, but the story offered only hearsay, not solid proof.
No sightings were reported of him in the last twenty years. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth.
Her mind remained shut to what happened to her in his office, but the question racked her mind: What became of Mila Shavik?
Was he still alive?
Did he ever lay awake at night and think of the evil he committed, the innocent lives he destroyed?
She doubted it.
A mirror hung on the wall opposite. Carla looked at herself, and saw her fury. She felt so powerless at the injustice—that a criminal like Shavik was never hunted down and prosecuted.
She balled her fist, slammed it hard on the study desk.
She hated these men. Hated what they did.
She could never forgive them.
Never.
Especially Shavik.
And her mother and father and poor, darling Luka.
Whatever became of them?
On the study desk were scattered some of Baize’s photographs. Next to them was the single framed photograph of her parents, her only keepsake.
It was taken on their wedding day. They were dressed up, smiling for the camera. They looked so handsome and young.
Her father tall and blond and tanned, with a smile that lit his face.
Her mother dark-haired, with glittering, happy eyes and tanned skin.
Next to it was one of the photographs from Baize’s pile. For some reason it was one Carla wanted to keep: a happy photograph of her and Luka and her mom and dad on a Dubrovnik beach.
Carla looked at the snapshots for a long time. She felt a flutter of nervous apprehension in her stomach. Would she ever learn her family’s fate?
Would she ever know if they had lived or died?
Even if by some miracle they survived, Luka would be a grown man by now, in his twenties.
It seemed so strange to think of her little brother as an adult.
Somehow she doubted her family had lived. That thought seared her to the bone. But she couldn’t give up hope.
She was determined to know what happened to her mother, father, and brother.
She placed the photograph taken on Dubrovnik beach in a large business-size envelope.
She wondered again about the missing pages. Had they simply fallen out, or were they deliberately removed? She marked the pages with the slip of paper containing the phone number for Alma Dragovich’s son.
She stood.
As she did so she noticed Jan’s brown leather attaché case propped beside the desk. The one he used for concerts and business trips. They both shared the study—the walls plastered with framed concert programs, and photographs of her and Jan together, younger, on vacation.
She picked up the attaché case. It had a combination lock. She tried the catch. It was locked. It wasn’t like Jan to lock things.
She didn’t know the combination.
She went down to the kitchen and found a long-nosed metal pliers in one of the drawers. She returned and used them to force the latch open.
Inside the case she found lots of sheet music, a half-full bottle of water, a handful of pencils, a pencil sharpener, and two worn rubber erasers.
She also found an unmarked envelope in one of the leather pockets.
She opened it.
Inside was a single page. She unfolded it.
The handwriting in ballpoint ink was Jan’s.
Mila Shavik.
Boris Arkov (alias Neumann?)
Both living in Atlantic City, New Jersey, under Serb mafia aliases.
Below the lines was what looked like a phone number and the word Angel.
She felt a stab like a stiletto prod her heart.
Mila Shavik in America?
And Boris Arkov?
She was astonished.
Who gave Jan this information?
And who or what was Angel? It sounded like a woman’s name. It was after 3 a.m., too late to call the number. She never remembered Jan talking about anyone named Angel. She heard footsteps.
She folded the page.
Baize came in, carrying a cup of hot chocolate. Witnessing Carla’s shutdown, her bouts of rage and crying, she insisted on staying over until she felt better. Her eyes drifted to the attaché case.
“I couldn’t sleep and heard a noise. Is everything all right, honey? What are you doing up so late?”
“Thinking.” Carla replaced the page and closed the attaché case.
“About the diary?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong, Carla?”
“There are some missing pages. Do you know anything about them?”
“No, I don’t. We gave the diary to Dr. Leon before he treated you. That was the last time I saw it until now.”
Carla thought about how to say this next part.
“Don’t be offended if you don’t see me for a little while.”
“Why?”
“I feel I need to take some time out. Maybe take a vacation. Be on my own for a little while.”
“Really?”
“There’s a lot I need to reflect on. So don’t fret if I don’t call.”
“I understand. It might be a good idea. You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“If you do need to talk, or you need company, just call me, okay? Or talk to Dr. Leon. He’s a good man.”
“I’ve got a feeling I’ll be talking to him for quite a while.”
“What are you going to do, Carla?”
“I’ll think about it tomorrow. Right now, I just need to get some more sleep.”
“Me, too, sweetheart.”
Baize kissed her forehead before she padded back down the hall.
Carla turned to her reflection in the mirror, the question still echoing in her mind. “What are you going to do, Carla?”
This time, she gave her honest answers.
“First, I’m going to find out what happened to my family.”
With fierce intensity, Carla stared back at her image in the mirror.
“Then I’m going to track down Mila Shavik.”
PART THREE
22
* * *
BELGRADE
It was a beautiful old stone house at Novi Sad, overlooking the Danube.
Once the summer residence of a fifteenth-century Serb prince, the two-hundred-acre mountain estate had its own centuries-old Orthodox monastery and was one of many homes belonging to Ivan Arkov, the present head of the Arkov mafia clan.
A dapper, slim man with a Van Dyke beard and a polka-dot bow tie, at seventy-two he looked more like a kindly college professor than a mafia godfather. But appearances hid a sadistic streak.
When an underling named Milan Jurisic stole clan money, he was made an example of: Jurisic was tracked down to Spain’s Costa Brava, tortured and beaten to death with a hammer, then his body put through an industrial chopper.
According to Interpol sources, underworld rumors claimed the thieving gangster was cooked in a stew, and his killers even ate part of him for lunch. Whether the rumor was true or not, one fact was known but never proven: Ivan Arkov had a macabre mask fashioned from the victim’s facial skin and kept as a grisly memento.
Few knew the true extent of the brutal crimes Arkov, a
widower, secretly directed during the Yugoslav wars. And now, from his mountain lair, Arkov ran an international criminal operation from which he had derived an estimated net worth of more than half a billion U.S. dollars.
As far as evidence of his criminal conspiracy went, he was flameproof. He never gave a written order, and he directed his lieutenants to do likewise. Not a shred of criminal evidence led back to him. Much of his money came from a raft of legitimate businesses he ran in tandem with the illegitimate ones whose ownership could not be traced to him.
An army of clever and expensive accountants, lawyers, and tax advisors made sure his real fortune stayed hidden offshore. And his powerful connections among politicians and the country’s elite, along with his cunning arm’s-length distance from his crimes, meant arrest was an unlikely option.
Besides, more than twenty years had passed since the genocidal war, and in all that time Arkov had never been indicted for a single crime.
When the limo carrying his son drove up that afternoon, Arkov senior was outdoors enjoying the sunshine and tending to his vineyard. Boris Arkov came over and kissed his father on both cheeks, Serbian style.
“You’re looking well. All this mountain air must be agreeing with you.”
By the swimming pool, three young women wearing tiny bright-colored bikinis lay tanning themselves on sun loungers. The younger Arkov flicked them an admiring glance.
His father snipped off a thick bunch of juicy red grapes with a pruning shears and tossed both in a wicker basket.
For more than fifty years he’d led this life and never tired of it. The power, the money—the life of luxury, the beautiful women—and the danger of always having to be one step ahead of the law. Like a deadly chess game, one that never failed to excite him. But instead of chess pieces, you wagered your life.
The older man eyed the briefcase, far more interested in its contents than the beautiful women. He wiped his hands vigorously on a cotton towel.
“Never mind the skirt. You’ve got everything we need?”
“It’s all here, Father.”
• • •
They sat at a table at the far end of the pool, well away from the sunbathing beauties.
A bodyguard brought one of Ivan Arkov’s own homemade wines and poured.
His son rolled the glass, sniffed, and finally sipped, letting the pale liquid wash over his tongue. He smiled his satisfaction.
“I love it, Father. Excellent. Lemony, with a hint of gooseberries on the nose.”
In truth, Arkov junior resisted the urge to spit the stuff into the pool. It tasted like something a dog might spray on a lamppost. His father was a lot of things, but he was not a winemaker.
The old man swirled his glass, sipped, and nodded. “I prefer the red, but the white’s been good this year.”
“You’ll have to produce your own label. Like that guy who did the Godfather movies.”
“Coppola?”
“Yeah, him.”
“I tried his stuff once. Wasn’t to my taste. For me, he should have stuck to making movies.” The old man put down his glass. “Let me see the figures.”
His son thumbed open the briefcase and removed its precious cargo: an Apple laptop. He switched it on, and when it booted up, the old man handed him a black memory stick.
His son slipped it into the side port, fiddled with the Apple’s mouse, and the screen began to fill with pictograms and data.
“Computers baffle me. You’re sure it’s all safe?”
“Your flash drive holds the decoder. No one can read the data without it. Shavik is a hundred percent certain that it’s safe.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
When the screen was loaded, Arkov handed over the Mac.
His father slipped on a pair of reading glasses. It was all here, the profit reports for the last four months for North America, in graphs and pie charts.
All of it far too sensitive to send encrypted over the Internet, in case the FBI or Interpol intercepted the data. Hence his son’s visits at least three times a year.
The head of the Arkov clan nodded, slipped off his reading glasses, and slid across the laptop. “Everything looks good. We can go over the details later. For now, let’s turn to the matter that’s been troubling me.”
“All taken care of. The guy’s dust.”
“Did you consult with Mila?”
“He wasn’t entirely happy about it. He wanted to first give the guy a tough warning, but I told him we had no option.”
“Explain.”
“The guy was asking too many questions. We think he was working with the usual groups that give us trouble. We blew up his car at the Carnegie Hall in New York.”
“Who was he?”
“A musician whose family was originally from Croatia. He was sniffing around, trying to get information on me and Shavik.”
“What about the police and FBI?”
“They’ll never trace the blast back to us. There were so many VIPs at the concert: Arab, Russian, Ukrainian, even a couple of wealthy Iraqis. Any one of them could have been the target.”
Boris Arkov paused. “What’s wrong, Father? You don’t look happy.”
“Are you expecting any more trouble?”
“The man’s wife survived. She wasn’t a target. But we don’t think she’s a concern.”
“Why?”
“We’ve kept a watch on her, and the guy’s only other family is his brother.”
“Thinking isn’t good enough. Be certain. The woman’s occupation?”
“She’s a former prosecutor.”
“I don’t like it already. A woman with her legal background could be trouble. Watch her more carefully.”
The old man fell silent, then pointed a finger at his son. “And tell Mila I want both of you to be ready to extract yourselves from the United States, just in case.”
“Father?”
“The slightest whiff that the police or FBI are on to you, you’ll vanish. Prepare whatever temporary travel documents and safe houses may be needed.”
“Mila won’t like that. He’s spent a lot of years building the U.S. businesses for you.”
“And he does an excellent job. But I don’t care what he does or doesn’t like. What I care about is our entire North American operation.”
The clan head tossed down his glasses. “Besides, I don’t like controversy, and I don’t like trouble. Both are bad for business. Meantime, both of you lie low. Whatever must be done, you do it discreetly. I don’t want any red flags being waved. Pass it on.”
“May I ask a question, Father?”
“Ask away.”
“When will I assume more responsibility within the clan? If you passed away tomorrow the family needs to be prepared to carry on.”
“Mila will be able to do that. I have absolute faith in him.”
Boris Arkov’s jaw tightened. “And what about me?”
“You may despise Mila, but once you put your differences aside for the sake of family loyalty, anything is possible. Can’t you see that loyalty is strength, Boris?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I took Mila into our house and cared for him as a son. His dead father was my good friend. I know there’s always been friction between you. But I’ve tried to teach you that the clan comes first. Even if at times I had to beat it into you. On the other hand, Mila always grasped the point of loyalty right away.”
“With respect, you didn’t answer my question.”
His father reflected. “Admit it, Mila’s so clever he could run the business blindfold. That’s why he’s heading the American operation. That’s why he’s your boss. Live with it, but more importantly, continue to learn from him.”
“Blood isn’t thicker than water?”
The old man heard the sullenness in his son’s voice, stood, slapped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s good that you’re impatient, Boris. No doubt you’ll have your turn when my time comes. But don’t be in such a hurry to
bury me. I still have a few years left in me yet.”
He jerked his head toward the swimming pool. “You want to pick some company for the evening?”
Boris Arkov eyed the three sunbathing beauties, his fatigue forgotten, his concerns eased. “I wouldn’t say no.”
“If there’s any hint of trouble from this man’s wife . . .”
“She’ll be dealt with.”
23
* * *
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
The address was in a row of suburban terraced houses.
A gritty working-class neighborhood flanked by a tired-looking redbrick industrial plant and a FedEx depot.
House number 1276 was neat and well kept, with freshly painted gray siding, the American flag hanging proudly if limply on the screened porch.
A white van was parked in the driveway. On the side was inscribed:
The best for less.
Larry Dragovich. International Plumber.
New York, London, Paris, New Jersey
(but mostly New Jersey)
At least someone had a sense of humor.
Carla sat there in her car for several minutes, almost too afraid to walk up the front path. Her sense of anticipation was gnawing inside her.
Was it the same Alma? Would she remember her? And what if she didn’t want to remember? She imagined that so many victims who lived through the genocide preferred to forget.
She called the number for Angel that morning, at nine. A woman’s sexy voice kicked in. “Hey, honeys, Angel here. Leave your number.”
She sounded young and sassy.
Who was she? How did Jan know her?
As Carla sat there, the front door of the house opened.
A man came down the porch steps, opened the garage door, and began to remove armfuls of small cardboard boxes and load them into the van. Stocky, in his forties, with a thick dark mustache and long graying hair tied in a ponytail, he wore a loose-fitting sleeveless T-shirt.
That morning when she called the number Max Shine gave her, it rang out until the answering message: “Hi, this is Larry Dragovich Plumbing. Leave your message and I’ll get right back to you.”
Carla didn’t call back but checked the name and number online, and got the New Jersey address. Larry the plumber worked from home.