by Glenn Meade
The track led to a field, a hundred yards away. She felt her palms perspire again, and her legs began to shake.
She remembered the nighttime death march to the camp, when the old man who couldn’t keep up had his throat cut by the guards. It was on a forest track just like this. Memories of that terrible night came back, and they terrified her.
She felt Kelly’s hand gently touch hers.
She opened her eyes. They felt moist.
“Do you think you’ll be all right?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
• • •
Kelly kept a firm grip on her hand as they approached the field.
A noisy electric generator hummed. A huge white canvas tent was erected, a gray van parked beside it. A couple of Porta Potties were nearby, with rows of shovels and picks stacked at the side.
A Toyota Land Cruiser had a trailer hitched to the back. It held a muddied, mini yellow JCB excavator, its grab like a hooked claw.
A local police car was parked nearby, two uniformed officers seated at a plastic trestle table in front of the tent, drinking coffee.
Carla trembled with distress.
She thought of how her mother must have met her death somewhere along this track.
Frightened, knowing her end had come. Knowing that she would never see her children or husband again. And all those other mothers and children. What terror had they gone through?
She touched her stomach.
Now that she was pregnant with her own baby, she truly understood the depths of their fear. Not for themselves, but for their children. Her blood curdled.
A half-dozen men and women, some wearing white overalls and using hand trowels, were excavating a wide, deep trench at the edge of the field.
A few of them worked with wire sifters, carefully examining the removed clay and stones. Another man stood over the trench, adjusting a camera on a tripod. Faces looked up, watching her arrival.
As Kelly led her toward the tent, Carla recoiled.
In a corner of the trench she saw a tangle of skulls, bones, and rib cages exposed above the soil, some with parts of clothing or shoes still attached. Most looked like the remains of adults, but others appeared to be children.
As if to prove it, a girl’s faded blue shoe poked through a knot of bones.
Carla put a hand to her mouth, stifled a cry.
She felt Kelly’s arm slide around her waist for support. “We’ll try and get this over with as quickly as we can.”
• • •
Kelly pulled aside the tent flap.
It was huge inside, with no groundsheet. A portable fan was on. Meshed vents around the walls allowed air to circulate. Even so, a stench of freshly dug earth and human decay filled their nostrils.
Half a dozen metal tables were laid side by side. On several human remains were laid out: parts of skeletons, skulls and bones, bits of rotted clothing and footwear. On others were unzipped body bags. Carla saw a complete skeleton in one, while others held a jumble of bones.
Kelly gestured to rows of metal shelves stacked with more body bags, each with tags attached.
“We’ve found ninety-seven victims in all in this location. Sixty-three women and thirty-four adolescents, children, and infants. Of the children, twenty were female, and fourteen were male.”
He stopped beside a table. It contained a grim exhibit of bones and a single adult skull, stained brown in places. An obscene bullet hole went through the back of the crown, exiting at the front. At the bottom of the table was a plastic basin containing what looked like a clump of dried-up clothing. A tag on the body bag lying by the exhibit said: O26B.
Kelly said, “These are the remains that gave us a positive match. They were among the first we excavated.”
Staring down at the pitiful skull and bones and ragged bits of clothing, she could hardly stand, her legs were shaking so much. Shock and a terrible anger registered on Carla’s face.
Is this all that remains of my mother?
She caressed the top of skull with her fingertips. She felt its coldness seep into her.
She closed her eyes, pictured her mother’s face, her smiling, calm eyes, and remembered her warmth, her spirit, her generosity.
She opened her eyes again. They were blurred, felt wet.
At that moment she wanted to scream, to call out to God and curse him, but she knew that no God did this; nor did any religion.
Just men.
Brutal, callous, evil men.
She recalled the lines in her mother’s diary after she visited Shavik in his office.
It’s done. I did what I had to.
What Shavik did makes me cry.
If she had a gun and Mila Shavik was in front of her, she would have shot him without a shred of mercy.
She hated him with a powerful intensity.
She put a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry.
Kelly said, “I’m sorry this is so distressing.”
He indicated the clump of dried clothing.
“What we’ve got here are bits of clothing and personal items found on or near the remains. Things often get jumbled up in mass grave sites, so we can never be sure who they belonged to. We’ve cleaned away the mud and decay as best we can.”
Kelly picked up a pair of short metal tongs from the table and used it to separate the items.
“Do you recognize anything at all?” he asked gently.
Carla saw a rusted cheap bracelet, some shreds of clothing, a broken, corroded earring, and what looked like a young girl’s plastic hair clasp.
“No.”
“The clothing is mostly rotted away. But sometimes people discover a personal item, like a piece of jewelry that they like to have as a keepsake. Difficult as this is, please take your time. Use the tongs if you wish.”
Kelly laid the tongs down in front of her.
Carla stared at the pile. It was such a tangled mess she couldn’t tell what it contained.
Her hands shook as she picked up the tongs. She sifted delicately, separating a piece of a patterned summer dress from what looked like a cheap headscarf.
She recognized nothing.
Perhaps they’re wrong about my mother? Perhaps it’s not her at all?
Her heart began to soar with hope.
And then it plummeted.
Embedded in the pile, she spotted the lump of wool.
So dark it was almost black, the color of dried blood. The same color as the burgundy cardigan her mother wore the last time she saw her.
Carla put a hand to her throat.
“Are—are you all right?” Kelly asked.
She lurched toward the exit.
41
* * *
“You’re all right now, girl, you’re all right. Here, drink some water.”
Kelly’s charming Irish accent calmed her, his hand firmly patting her face.
She felt shaken, and lightheaded. She was sitting on a fold-up chair outside the tent. A female colleague of Kelly’s offered her a bottle of ice-cold water.
Carla took a swallow.
Kelly said to the woman, “Thanks, Jane, you’re a pet.”
The woman left. A thermos flask lay beside Kelly and he screwed it open.
“I’d offer you a sip of whiskey if I had some. A shot of Jameson is a great one to steady the nerves, but all I have is tea, I’m afraid. Will you have a drop?”
Carla shook her head.
Kelly filled his mug. The sun beat down. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
“Every time I’m there to help someone see their dead, they either faint or lose their head completely. Sorry if I patted your face too hard, but you were getting a bit wobbly and I thought you might pass out.”
He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and offered one to Carla.
She declined. Kelly lit a cigarette, touching it to the flame from a plastic lighter. “I never hit a woman in my life until I came to work here. Now it’s almost a regular event. I’ve
become a right brute, so I have.”
Carla clenched her fists so tightly the skin was bone white. She felt a powerful sense of grief and anger that made her seethe.
“How could they kill women and children like that? How . . . how could they just bulldoze the corpses into a pit, the way you’d bulldoze garbage? How?”
Kelly took a drag on his cigarette. “I know, it’s hard to make sense of it all. And so many of them were children of tender years.”
He blew out smoke with a sigh that sounded like an ache. “It’s been truly awful, the work here. I’ve seen atrocities committed by all sides—Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs.”
He paused. “I’ve excavated the remains of adults, children, and infants who’ve been shot, or beheaded, or strangled, or had their throats cut. I’ve even seen the remains of unborn babies ripped from their mothers’ wombs. The depravity is almost beyond comprehension.”
“So much evil, and for what, Mr. Kelly?”
“On the surface, it always looks to the world as if it’s all about religion—about the endless conflict between Christian and Muslim. But the majority of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians were decent people who wanted nothing to do with killing.”
He looked at her. “In rural areas like these there are certainly feuds that have gone on for centuries, split down mostly ethnic lines. Feuds between towns, ethnic groups, even families. They’re almost like hillbilly feuds—the Hatfields and McCoys—only far more savage. But it’s not just about that.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Hatred and intolerance are certainly part of it. And sheer cruelty. But like the Nazis or the Japanese military class during World War Two it’s mostly about arrogance—maybe the worst sin of all, because it makes some people see others as less than human, as inferior enemies deserving of torture and death.”
Kelly jabbed a finger toward the pit. “That’s what that’s all about. And because they can get away with it, because the rule of law has broken down. It’s in human nature. As for the Serb mafia involvement, it was about making a profit under the guise of patriotism—stealing people’s homes and land, their possessions and valuables, and often killing their victims. But rest assured the prosecutors will gather all the evidence they can. If justice can be done, it will.”
“Do you really believe that, Mr. Kelly? Do you believe with all your heart that all the killers who did this will be caught and punished?”
Her voice sounded hard, demanding.
Kelly chewed his bottom lip a moment, picked at a fleck of tobacco, and flicked it away. “No. I don’t think all of them will.”
“At least you’re honest.”
He tapped ash from his cigarette. “The bits of wool . . . ?”
“My mother wore a cardigan that same color.”
“You may think it pointless, but the authorities will be grateful for whatever you can tell them in a witness statement. It doesn’t have to be today. But they’d like to have it for the record.”
She followed Kelly’s stare down the valley toward the Devil’s Hill.
“It’s probably wise you don’t go near that place now.”
“You’ve seen the camp?”
“I went in to have a look a few years back and it gave even me the creeps.”
“Does anybody go near it?”
“I wouldn’t think so. It’s all boarded up.”
“But you can still get in?”
“Sure.”
“How did it look inside?”
“A bit of mess. There’s no electricity, and parts of the building were caved in with bomb rubble.”
“They left it as it was?”
“Pretty much as they found it. The authorities no doubt had enough to be doing elsewhere, rebuilding towns and villages.”
“On . . . on the ground floor were some corridors. One of them led to a janitor’s closet.”
“I don’t remember, to tell you the truth.”
“Do you know if the entire building was searched?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Why?”
42
* * *
Carla saw the collection of concrete buildings with pebble-and-mortar-coated walls and black slate roofs.
Bits of an old army truck were scattered in a meadow, a corroded engine block and a mangled fender. The camp’s barbed-wire fence all rusted now.
As the Toyota Land Cruiser drove up the entrance road, she felt her stomach turn.
The camp was just as she remembered it, except parts of the roof were caved in by gaping shell holes. Chunks of masonry were gouged from the walls, stitched by bullet holes.
Her legs began to shake again.
Kelly braked as they approached a metal gate at the camp entrance. In the back of the Land Cruiser sat two of his male colleagues.
One of them jumped out and slid the gate’s metal bolt.
Kelly hit the accelerator, and drove the Toyota through, pulling the small JCB excavator on the trailer.
• • •
They stopped at the front entrance.
Windows were covered with rotting plywood, the assembly square in front of the main building blanketed with weeds and thick clumps of wild grass.
Carla saw the green double entrance doors, the paint flaking and weathered.
One of the doors was hanging off its hinges.
Kelly said, “Are you really sure you want to go through with this? In all likelihood, the place was searched, considering it was a war crimes’ scene.”
“But we don’t know for sure.”
“No. But I’d assume—”
“I can’t assume anything.”
Carla felt apprehensive as they stepped out of the Land Cruiser. Approaching the double green doors, Kelly and his men carried flashlights.
The sun was out, the day hot. Crickets chirped, a smell of rotting wood corroding the air.
The green doors and the pebble-coated walls on either side were scarred with bullet holes. Carla turned to look around the camp square.
The tendons on her neck felt taut. Images flooded in. She tried to fight them off, but they were too powerful.
She recalled arriving in the camp in the cold and dark early hours, tired and hungry. She remembered the cries of despair as the men and boys were separated from their families, and her father being taken away.
The look on his face as the truck drove off. He was waving bravely through what must have been a terrible fear. For some reason she recalled seeing tears running down his face. Were they tears of helplessness and shame that he could do nothing to protect his family?
Where are you, beloved Papa? What became of you? Will I ever see your kind and smiling face again?
Other images floated in. Boris Arkov striking Alma the savage blow that cut her from cheek to jaw, her dentures shuttling across the ground.
And Carla dropping the silver dollar, seeing it roll toward Shavik’s feet, a distraction that may have saved Alma’s life.
Her stomach knotted as she recalled the humiliation of the mothers and girls dragged away by the guards that first night, and the livid terror on her mother’s face, fearful that they might be next.
She recalled the brutality of Mila Shavik’s men, and again came the questions.
How could any man abuse mothers and children like that, in front of each other? How could they let children starve and mothers fret themselves half to death with worry and revulsion? How could they rape and murder their victims so callously?
Some of the men must have been fathers themselves. Some must have had children and infants they loved, or mothers and daughters and sons they adored.
Was it all because the victims were simply of a different culture, or religion? How did that make the victims any less human?
Another memory intruded. Standing there on the square that first night, clutching Luka’s hand as he wore his Thomas the Train backpack. His little face was wide-eyed and openmouthed with fear, looking lost as he squeezed her hand tightly, fright in his voice
as he whispered to her.
“Will we be all right, Carla? Will we? Will Mama and Papa be okay, too?”
His fearful questions rang again in her ears.
She was afraid to move beyond the green door hanging off its hinges.
Afraid to take that first step.
Afraid to think of what could lie ahead.
What if Alma was wrong?
What if her tormented mind only imagined seeing Luka at the hospital? What if Luka and the other children were killed by the shelling?
Disturbing questions raged through her mind.
In despair, Carla placed her palm against the bullet-gouged wall and took several deep breaths, as if to prepare herself.
She felt fingers touch her arm. She looked around.
Kelly didn’t speak, but his soft eyes flicked to the green doors, then back again, asking her the question.
Are you ready?
She nodded.
Kelly’s flashlight sprang on.
He pushed aside the hanging door, the hinges groaned, and they stepped inside.
43
* * *
Broken glass crunched beneath their feet.
A stench of rotted wood filled the hallway.
Carla’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, as Kelly and his men waved their flashlights. The entrance hallway looked smaller than she remembered.
It was covered in dust, debris, and shattered glass.
She saw discarded sardine and tuna cans, rusted and empty.
Old wooden ammunition crates with Russian markings lay scattered about, as well as spent cartridge cases. A scrunched-up rotted blouse lay tossed in a corner, next to a man’s shriveled green sock.
This was the hallway through which women were dragged for interrogation or rape or beatings.
Just inside the hallway on the left was a main office, the door’s frosted glass pane smashed.
Shavik’s office, no doubt. She felt a chill down her spine.
Strange that still she could not remember a single thing about their meeting on the evening before she escaped.
Perhaps it was just as well. Even the thought of being face-to-face with Shavik repulsed her.