by Glenn Meade
Arkov lurched backward. Shavik shot him again, in the heart. As he slumped sideways in the chair, blood everywhere, the bodyguards were already moving.
Shavik spun in his seat, aimed, and shot the first man in the chest from twenty-five yards across the pool.
The second man managed to get off one shot, clipping Shavik’s shoulder, before he fired twice in return, punching the bodyguard back, hitting him in the chest, killing him instantly.
Shavik stood and walked over to the first bodyguard, picked up his weapon. The wounded man went to sit up, reach for his weapon. Shavik shot him in the heart.
The gunshots echoed and died like church bells, and then came stillness, complete stillness, the beauty and peace of the hills and gorges of Novi Sad all around him, the view splendid in the sun, as always, all the way down to the Danube. The way it always looked when he was here with his father.
There was a surreal quality to it all. As if he were underwater, everything happening in slow motion. He was in that place again.
The place inside himself that he shared with no one. But this time he felt a kind of calm he had not felt since he was a child, like one of those moments when he was falling asleep in his father’s arms.
It was like a stone dissolving inside him.
For the first time in a long time, he smiled, really smiled, and at the same time he felt his eyes become wet.
Other noises now. More bodyguards rushing out from the house, guns drawn.
Standing there, staring out at the peace and the tranquility around him, Shavik felt the remarkable peace seep within him.
Two bodyguards rushed forward, thirty yards away, raising their handguns.
Shavik didn’t give them a chance.
He raised the pistol.
Touching it to his left temple, he squeezed the trigger.
88
* * *
You breathe in deeply, let it out.
Water laps the lakeshore.
A hot sun warms your skin. You feel at peace.
The kind of peace you could only dream of. Like waking after a long and restful sleep.
The spring air is as soft as the old cotton blanket you sit upon. Regan and Josh are on the dock, painting a houseboat. They wave. You wave back and dip your hand in the cool water, trailing your fingers.
It feels good.
Nine months have passed.
So much has happened.
You look down at your sleeping baby. A mosquito net covers her crib, and you can hear the soft and comforting murmur of her breathing. You lean in close, inhale the scent of her skin.
With her plump cheeks, angel lips, and dimpled smile, she has laid claim to your soul, and to Baize’s. You both marvel at the circle of life but you know it’s far deeper than that. A creator’s magic, a glorious mystery that is far too profound for any of us mere mortals to comprehend.
And you think this is how it must have been for your parents all those years ago when they gazed in wonder at you and Luka, all of you huddled close together for warmth in Mr. Banda’s apartment.
You understand. Understand the bottomless depth of their love and the enormity of their pain when they could not protect you from evil. You prefer not to dwell on that pain, for it disturbs you so.
No more than you want to dwell on what happened to you in Shavik’s office, for there are days when that thought creeps into your mind like an intruder, firing your imagination with worrisome conjecture. All you know for certain is that for some reason you believe what Shavik said, that he never harmed you or your mother.
And that you hate him no more.
But you do not dwell on such thoughts, either.
You prefer to live in the present.
Ronnie strolls down from the cabin carrying a warmed baby’s bottle. He hands it to you, sits beside you on the blanket, crossing his legs.
Your baby cries as you lift her from the cradle until you touch the bottle to her hungry lips, and you hear her suck. You’ve called her Lana.
Ronnie whispers to her, his eyes locking with yours as you look up, and something passes between you, a question asked but not spoken. Happy?
The answer lies in the touch of your hand upon his face. More than I ever thought I’d be.
Whatever is between you, it goes deeper than desire. You are grief’s survivors, soul mates, friends.
You know Jan would have liked this man.
For when he holds you in the stillness of the night you know he holds you out of love. And even if it isn’t love for you just yet, then it comes close, and that’s enough right now. You’ll be patient, give it time.
Ronnie hands you a white envelope from his back pocket.
“A present. For Momma.”
You feel the outline of something folded. “What is it?”
“Look inside.”
You tear open the envelope. You see the printed travel documents. The journey you’ve wanted to make. And you look into Ronnie’s eyes and say, “When?”
“Whenever you feel ready.”
• • •
There are many ways to reach the grave near Mostar.
You can drive by car up through resin-scented woods, or travel by bus or by train, then walk across the bridge over the bluest river in the world, and climb the hill that overlooks the sixteenth-century town.
There are many ways but on this sunny day you drive from Dubrovnik in a rented car.
You know these streets. You have traced their narrow ways on colored maps on your computer screen. You know, too, that on warm days young men still come to Mostar bridge, undress their supple bodies, and dive into the ice-cold water to earn the title “Mostari,” just as they have done for over three hundred years.
You park near the cemetery, a long meadow scattered with butterflies.
Ronnie’s lips brush your cheek; you let go of his hand and step out of the car.
“If you need me, I’m here, Carla.”
You nod.
But you know he will meet you later.
For this is something you must do alone.
• • •
You walk among the headstones, carrying a bunch of daffodils.
A gardener pruning an olive tree nods as you wander to the simple marble stone. Under the blistering sun, you sit on the grass next to their grave. It makes you feel closer to your departed.
You touch the warm marble, feel the inscription. The words you’ve chosen to remember them by. Words you want the world to know. Are they not true? The truest words ever spoken?
The marble’s heat seeps into your fingertips.
You weep.
For in your deepest being, you feel the presence of those you love who lie here now—your father, your mother, Luka.
You look from the blue sky to the white stone, whispering to them, telling them that you miss them, that you think of them lying here in the cold and snow of winter and the scorching sun of summer.
You tell them that you will always miss and love them. That you can never forget them.
A wind gusts. Like a warm tongue, it licks around the cracked, centuries-old stone of the town’s cobbled streets.
You hear voices.
You hear them call your name, like a whisper on the breeze.
From your pocket you take the piece of frayed blue cotton—that comforting square of Luka’s blanket that granted him peaceful angel sleep on so many restless nights—clutch it gently as if it’s made of precious golden thread, before you touch it to your lips.
Do you hear me, Luka?
I know this comforting square of cotton will soothe my baby. Just as I know that here on this earth there are sweet and blissful days that lie ahead of me.
Wondrous days when I will walk down to the sea with my child, and we will rush together into blue waves, and scoop out armfuls of cool water and whoop with joy. Just as I know that although you and I are no longer one flesh, we have never stopped loving.
You kiss their stone.
You lay d
own the daffodils, but keep a single flower.
You place the piece of blue cotton in your pocket and say goodbye, but only for now, for you know you will come here again.
And you tell them what you want to tell them.
That one fine day when your last hour comes, when your heart has reached its journey’s end, when you sigh your last breath, you know that you will come here to be with them.
But not yet.
But not yet.
• • •
You stroll the narrow streets toward the old town.
The olive tree your father carved upon is no longer there but you stand on the edge of rebuilt Mostar bridge and gaze down.
Blue water rushes below you.
You think of your mother and father whose lives entwined here. And you know that this bridge is what it has always been, a link, a symbol of hope.
You have prepared for this moment. Waited for it, even though fearful.
As you stand there, a handful of youths stroll down the street in their bathing suits, talking and laughing, before they climb onto a parapet and plunge their bodies into the cold blue waters.
They surface and wave at you from the water, laughing.
You remove your top and jeans, your bathing suit beneath.
Young men stare. Some protest and warn you of the danger. But you climb onto the parapet and gaze down at the water far below, still clutching the flower.
You are doing this for Lana, your mother.
This is her promise kept.
Without thinking, you jump.
You feel the air rush in your ears. You enter the water with a huge splash, hands out a little, to slow your fall. When you surface, you take a great deep breath. You feel invigorated.
You’re drenched, and laughing.
This is how your father must have felt that day, when he handed your mother his heart.
You swim lazily toward the shore, toward the winding walkway where Ronnie is waving, waiting to meet you on the riverbank.
You take slow and idle strokes, for you enjoy the cool freshness of the water as it soothes your body like a balm.
Like that day in the river with Luka.
Little Luka with his pretty, mischievous smile and his way of laughing and joking as he giggles and runs away, teasing you to chase him, saying: “No, no kisses. No kisses for you today.” And then: “Well . . . well maybe just one if you are good?” before you catch him and his giggling explodes and he plants a kiss on your cheek with tender cherub lips.
How can you ever forget him?
Your heart is still broken. It can never heal. It will never stop weeping.
And yet there is hope, for another life has grown inside of you.
You let go of the flower in your hand. In a flash of yellow it floats downstream.
You find comfort in such small things.
In the ceaseless flow of nature, and in the life of your baby. In the knowledge that a timeless ritual goes on.
You find comfort in the truth that existence has an unquenchable power all its own, one that hate or pain or dark shadows or the evil brutality of men cannot destroy.
Because you know in the depths of your being, just as we all know, that we can unleash love or hate, whichever one we choose. And that hate perishes the moment you stop feeding it; but good lives on long after it dies.
And suddenly they come to you, those profound and yet simple truths: that life is greater and stronger than all the shadows. That nothing loved is ever truly lost. And whatever evil wraps its arms around us, its embrace is only momentary, a fleeting thing.
And you remember your mother’s words, the same words you have inscribed upon her gravestone. You can still feel their chiseled outline beneath your fingertips, as deeply as if they’re engraved upon your soul.
Listen to them—please listen to them—for we all know these words to be true:
How can evil destroy the light of goodness that shines within us?
How can it ever?
When there is not enough darkness in the world to quench the light of one small candle . . .
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
Story seeds can begin in so many unexpected ways, and this one was no different.
Some years ago, one spring morning I sat on a café terrace in Croatia’s beautiful, ancient walled city of Dubrovnik, overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Bullet scars still gouged the walls from the Yugoslav wars that had once plunged the region into the kind of cruel genocide not seen since the Nazi holocaust.
A young woman sat down nearby. She was pretty, with long dark hair and sensitive brown eyes. We talked. Let’s call her Marina—not her real name—and her harrowing tale was not one I expected to hear on such a beautiful spring morning.
I learned that America was Marina’s adopted homeland, and that her parents had met in Dubrovnik in the early 1980s, fallen in love, and married.
What happened in Yugoslavia over twenty years ago, the world knows about—a genocidal war that cost a quarter of a million lives.
Marina, then eleven, and her mother and beloved younger brother were rounded up and forcibly separated from their father by Serb paramilitaries. Imprisoned, the family endured the unspeakable horror of a rape camp for many months, in conditions as cruel as those in Auschwitz.
The day the camp was finally liberated, Marina was found wandering the outskirts of a nearby town by U.S. Special Forces—a lost survivor, alone, and so badly traumatized that she was unable to speak for days.
Later adopted by one of the U.S. officers who found her, she had come back to her mother’s homeland hoping that a sample of her DNA would find a match to any of the many thousands of bodies discovered in mass graves, among them her family.
Much of The Last Witness borrows from Marina’s tragic story.
Much more again is based on real events that occurred at a time when the world, despite its pledge, allowed genocide to happen once again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
The writer’s life would be ideal were it not for all the writing.
Thankfully, the research is a lot easier because no writer has to do it alone.
To those who helped me along the lonesome trail—and you all know who you are—my grateful thanks.
I would particularly like to single out Ian Hanson, in Sarajevo, who has my greatest admiration for doing a vital forensics job that truly only the chosen can do.
And in Ireland, David Lillie, trauma therapist, who has explored the dark shadows that lurk within the human heart, and who helped me understand the minds of those who suffer the brutal distress of abuse and war.
Any inaccuracies in either of their fields of expertise within this book, deliberate to suit the story or otherwise, are mine and not theirs.
To Fiona O’Connor, for her invaluable help.
To Rheagan, one of my favorite southern belles among the wonderful Redmond clan—having kept my promise, I just hope you forgive the name change.
To Dan and Dolly Kilgore—for allowing me to borrow Union County Marina, in the beautiful hills of East Tennessee, as a setting.
To the three amigos: Lukie, Nealo Bambilo, and Kimmy K.
To my family and fellow “Waltons”: Tom, Diane, and Elaine.
And to our mom, Carmel, because she deserves all our thanks and because we love her.
Gratias to all.
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THE LAST WITNESS
* * *
READING GROUP GUIDE
Living in New York with her pianist husband, Carla Lane has no clue that she is the last lucid witness to the brutality that occurred during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the 1990s. But after members of the Serbian mafia assassinate her husband, memories of her childhood come flooding back. Carla learns she was found clutching her mother’s diary after her camp had been liberated, a memory she repressed after years of intensive therapy. Once her past is revealed, Carla decides she must avenge her husband’s death and the likely deaths of her parents and young brother—a quest that leads her face-to-face with hardened war criminals who have their own form of justice and shocking secrets.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. “And you, a stranger whose war this never was, are buried among them.” So begins the Prologue to The Last Witness, a text written in the second person, in the voice of the dead Lana Joran. What is the effect of the direct address “you”? As the reader, do you feel implicated in the story—the war, the unmarked grave? Does the “you” make the story feel more intimate?
2. Revisit the scene when Paul Lane discovers his dog’s throat has been cut. Is this act of brutality an omen of events to come in the novel? Compare this omen with Carla’s nightmares. Do both act as warnings of the same moment to come in The Last Witness? What moment do you think that might be?
3. Paul warns Carla not to pursue Jan’s murders because they are “a law unto themselves”—no one, not even the police, are safe from their wrath. Do you blame Paul for his decision to stay out of the fray? Is he making the “right” choice? Why or why not?