Eric glanced at his watch. He was running late. Better pick up the pace, he thought. The ambassador was not famous for his patience. If he had had more time, Eric would have chosen a circuitous route for the short walk from the embassy to the ambassador’s residence, one that bypassed his ghost. But he was in a hurry.
The ambassador’s residence was something of an oddity. It was aggressively modern in a society that valued the traditional, antiseptic in a city that never quite felt clean. The guard at the gate recognized Eric and waved him through without asking to look at his badge.
“Dobar dan, Rasim,” Eric said by way of greeting.
“Dobro došli, gospodine, Eric.” Welcome.
Ambassador Prescott Wylie was sitting on the veranda at the back of the house nursing a glass of tomato juice that Eric knew was a mere stalk of celery away from being classified as a Bloody Mary. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Wylie liked to think of himself as a modern Churchill, but he had really been successful only in his emulation of the British Bulldog’s prodigious drinking habits.
The American ambassador to Bosnia was physically imposing, and he had gotten far using his bulk to intimidate colleagues as well as foreigners. He had played linebacker at Dartmouth, and even after three decades of diplomatic dinners, he was still more big than fat. Eric was not impressed by either Wylie’s bulk or his brain. The ambassador’s father had been both a Dartmouth alum and an American diplomat of some renown. Eric suspected that it was his legacy status, rather than any actual talent, that accounted for Wylie’s career success.
The ambassador was not alone. The Nordic blonde sitting across from him with a relatively restrained double espresso in front of her was familiar to Eric from the papers and by reputation. Annika Sondergaard was a Danish politician, a former foreign minister and current High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The Union in this case was the European Union, the block of twenty-eight mostly wealthy states that Bosnia theoretically aspired to join. Hers was a highfalutin title if ever there was one, and Sondergaard had staked much of her political credibility on an all-out effort to keep Bosnia from sliding back into chaos.
The U.S.-backed Dayton peace agreement had ended the fighting in Bosnia in 1995 but left behind a divided system of government that had proved to be entirely unworkable. Bosnia was composed of two “entities,” the borders of which roughly tracked the front lines from twenty years ago. On the map, the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska with its capital in Banja Luka seemed to squeeze the Muslim-Croat Federation from the north and east like a vise. Sarajevo’s central government was weak and fractious. Real power was held at the entity level. The negotiators at Dayton had understood full well the inherent fragility of the system they devised, but it was the best they could do at the time. The priority had been to stop the fighting. A viable unitary state, it was assumed, would emerge over time. But it hadn’t worked out that way.
The new High Rep had her own ideas about what the country should look like, and she had outlined the principles in her New Compact for Bosnia, a proposal that was already being referred to in European capitals as the Sondergaard Plan. Eric did not doubt her sincerity, but Sondergaard was one in a long line of senior public officials whose ambitions of Balkan peacemaking were animated in no small part by dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize. Most quickly found their plans undone by the intransigence of a three-sided conflict that had been given twenty years to set.
The High Rep looked older in person than she did in the papers. Worn down by the weight of office perhaps, Eric thought. Or maybe she just photographed especially well. Still, she was a striking woman with an angular face and sharp cheekbones that gave her something of an air of haughty indifference. Even sitting down, she looked tall. There was a reason the local press had dubbed her the Valkyrie, and the political cartoonists invariably drew her with a horned helmet and metal breastplate.
“You’re late,” the ambassador observed with a hint of irritation.
And you, sir, are drunk.
“My apologies, Ambassador. I couldn’t get the deputy speaker of parliament off the phone.”
“He does go on,” the ambassador acknowledged, seemingly mollified now that he had established his dominant position in front of the attractive woman. “I don’t think you’ve had the chance to meet High Representative Sondergaard.”
“Not yet, no. Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
The High Representative looked him up and down as though he were a blind date. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
“Good to meet you, Eric,” she said, once she had finished her brief assessment. “The people in the EU mission here tell me that you’re the man to know in this town.”
Eric shrugged.
“They exaggerate.”
Eric sat at the table, and the waiter brought him his usual, a cup of strong and bitter Turkish coffee poured straight out of a slender copper džezva. The finely ground Turkish-style coffee that served as the region’s universal lubricant was one of the legacies of five hundred years under Ottoman rule and—as far as Eric was concerned—perhaps the single greatest gift that any culture had ever given another.
“Hvala,” he whispered sotto voce to the server by way of thanks.
“Petrosian. That’s Armenian, isn’t it?” the High Representative asked.
“On my father’s side,” Eric replied, knowing full well why she had asked. With his brown skin and vaguely almond-shaped eyes, he did not look especially Armenian. It would be kinder, he decided, to assuage her curiosity without making her ask a question she might fear was intrusive. “My mother was Cambodian.”
“Was?”
“Yes, she passed away when I was young.”
“I’m sorry.”
Eric nodded in acknowledgment of her sympathy but said nothing. He did not like to speak about his mother. When his father had smuggled her out of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, she had left a part of herself behind. A part of her that died along with nearly every member of her extended family. Eric had been the one to find her body, a ten-year-old boy confused and uncertain as to why his mother would be sitting in the car in the garage with the engine running. To this day, exhaust fumes had a kind of Proustian power to send him back in time to that awful moment.
“You were here before,” Sondergaard said to him in a manner that was almost, but not quite, a question. “During the war, I mean.”
“I was.”
“As a diplomat?”
“A journalist. Stringing for the wire services. Reuters and UPI mostly.”
“What convinced you to cross over?”
“I thought I could do more good in this job. Make more of a difference.”
“And have you?”
“Jury’s still out.”
“Cambodia, Armenia, Bosnia. They all have something in common, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do.”
Prescott Wylie looked confused. Eric turned to him.
“Genocide.”
Annika Sondergaard, he decided, would have made one hell of a psychiatrist.
“So tell me what I need to know about the guest of honor.”
Sondergaard was clearly talking to Eric, but the ambassador jumped in to answer the question.
“Bakir Hasović is one of the linchpins on the Federation side,” he said. “If your plan is going to get traction, you are going to need to make sure that he’s supportive. His position is deputy prime minister in the Federation government, but that undersells his importance. As the head of the Bosniak Unity Party, he’s the key to the coalition. If the BUP pulls out, the government falls. That lets Hasović punch well above his weight.”
So far, all pretty much in line with the briefing that Eric had given the ambassador earlier that morning to prep him for this meeting. Diplomacy was an odd business that operated according to its own arcane rules. It cou
ld, in particular, be rigidly hierarchical and rank conscious. As a consequence, it was often the case that the person speaking in a meeting knew much less than the younger, more junior people taking notes or sitting along the back wall. It was just the way things worked. Eric’s job was to advise the ambassador in private and defer to him in front of others. He had never been especially good at the second part, to Wylie’s occasional irritation.
Prescott Wylie was competent enough in his own way, but he was a newcomer to the Balkans who had spent most of his career well to the west of where the Iron Curtain had once been drawn across the continent. Most of his previous assignments would have fit neatly into the group of countries that Washington wags referred to derisively as the Chocolate Makers. Wylie did not speak the local language, and he had not had enough time to develop any kind of real feel for the culture. Living inside his bubble of drivers and bodyguards, armored cars, and translators, it was unlikely that he ever would. This was a manageable shortcoming as long as he was willing to listen. In their nine months together, however, it had become clear to Eric that Prescott Wylie was quite taken with the sound of his own voice.
“So what approach would you recommend I take with Hasović to get him to see things my way?” Sondergaard asked the ambassador. “Our way,” she corrected herself.
“I’d suggest playing to his sense of patriotism. Go with the big picture: bringing Bosnia into the twenty-first century and the European family of nations.”
It was a stock answer that could have applied to just about any conversation with just about anyone on just about anything. It was also, Eric knew, absolutely wrong. This was not at all what he and Wylie had discussed earlier that morning. Hasović was a crook. You didn’t appeal to a crook’s conscience; you appealed to his wallet. Wylie would never forgive Eric, however, for challenging him in front of Sondergaard. He held his tongue. The ambassador was just getting warmed up.
“Hasović is a Bosnian nationalist,” Wylie continued. “He needs to understand your plan as the last best chance to keep the country together. He has no love for the Serbs, but I am convinced that he loves his country and ultimately shares our vision of a unitary Bosnia with room enough for all.”
Eric almost choked on his coffee. The only thing Hasović loved was money.
“That’s very interesting,” Sondergaard said, even as her tone made clear that it was not.
The ambassador’s butler appeared in the doorway. He was a Bosnian Croat of indeterminate sexuality who affected the manners of an Edwardian-era majordomo that he seemed to have acquired by watching pirated DVDs of Downton Abbey.
“Deputy Prime Minister Hasović is here, Mr. Ambassador,” he announced in his passable English, with an accent that somehow merged Slavic with faux British.
“Show him in.”
They all rose in greeting as Hasović was ushered into the room. He was short and dark and built like a wrestler. His black hair was styled in an early-Elvis pompadour held in place by so much mousse that it looked almost shellacked. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and no tie. The top two buttons of the shirt were undone, doubtless to offer his interlocutors a better look at the thick gold chain around his neck that was the Bosnian gangster world’s equivalent of a Zegna tie.
Hasović’s hands were big and beefy, and his grip was just a little too strong, an effort to dominate rather than a greeting.
“Please.” The ambassador gestured to the table once the initial round of introductions were done. “High Representative Sondergaard doesn’t have much time, I’m afraid, so we need to get right to business. But first, coffee? Something stronger?”
No business in the Balkans was ever transacted without a cup of coffee to smooth the discussion and maybe a shot glass of rakija or homemade brandy to set the tone.
Hasović took a Turkish coffee with no sugar and a glass of plum brandy. Bosniaks were nominally Muslim, but Eric knew few who didn’t drink.
“I suppose you know why I’m in Sarajevo,” Sondergaard began. Hasović’s English, while not perfect, was adequate. Eric was along for the meeting in part to help with translation should that be necessary.
“More or less,” Hasović replied. “You are here to sell me a plan.”
“Not sell, really, but perhaps persuade. My view and the views of my colleagues in Washington and Brussels is that Bosnia is again slipping toward war. For a brief moment, it seemed that Zoran Dimitrović’s election in the RS marked a turn for the better, and for a year or so, Bosnia seemed to be moving in the right direction. But the last six months have been little short of disastrous, and violence seems increasingly likely.”
Hasović nodded as though only half listening. He knew all of this.
“The ambassador tells me that you are a patriot. I hope that you appreciate the urgency of the situation, the need to overcome not only the legacy of the war but the legacy of the peace as well. Bosnia needs a new deal and a new political framework. And I need your help to get there.”
Hasović’s eyebrows had lifted in what struck Eric as amusement at Sondergaard’s description of him as a patriot.
“Madam Ambassador,” Hasović said. “You are still new to this part of the world. With all respect, we have seen many emissaries come with many plans. Almost all of them fail, and the envoys depart leaving those of us who live here to suffer the . . .” He turned and looked at Eric. “Posledice.”
“Consequences.”
“Hvala.”
“We must all take risks in the service of peace,” Sondergaard said.
“After you, Ambassador.”
Sondergaard and Hasović sparred for another twenty minutes, with Ambassador Wylie occasionally interjecting his own views as though reminding the principals that he was still there. Eric took notes, but it was clear that the BUP leader was not buying the line about a twenty-first-century Bosnia. Hasović may not love the status quo, but he had learned to benefit from it. Change was risk, and Sondergaard and Wylie had not done enough to spell out the potential benefits.
Then Hasović said something that seemed to Eric like an opening.
“The burden always seems to fall most heavily on those who have been a failed initiative’s most committed supporters,” Hasović continued. “Political leaders suffer. Business suffers. The position of the Bosniak Unity Party is really quite delicate. We are faced with some potentially serious setbacks. I have to consider the good of my party as well.”
Eric understood what Hasović was saying, and he also knew that neither Wylie nor Sondergaard was in a position to grasp its significance.
“You do know, Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, that the international community would want to protect key public enterprises in the transition to a new unitary political system . . . to ensure continuity of certain services.”
Eric was breaking protocol by speaking up, but if there was a chance to capitalize on the opportunity Hasović had given them and potentially get him behind the Sondergaard Plan, it was worth pissing off Wylie. Hell, pissing off Wylie might even be a good enough reason to do it.
Hasović’s eyes narrowed as he considered what Eric had said. This was language he could relate to.
“What kind of businesses are you talking about?” he asked carefully.
Eric glanced briefly at Wylie and Sondergaard. The ambassador looked like he had just bitten into a rotten piece of fruit, but the High Representative gave him the briefest and subtlest of nods. Go ahead.
“Basic services, really. Electricity. Water.” Eric paused and looked Hasović squarely in the eyes. “Trash collection.”
Blue Line Sanitation, the quasi-private company that had the lucrative contract for trash pickup in the greater Sarajevo municipal area, was under the nominal control of Hasović’s son-in-law. In reality, it was an open secret that Hasović called the shots and had first claim on the spoils. Blue Line Sanitation was the single most import
ant source of funding for the Bosniak Unity Party, which was run more like a for-profit company than a political party. For Hasović’s profit, actually. In the last few weeks, there had been talk that Blue Line might lose the contract to a rival company with close ties to the powerful interior minister. Hasović could not allow that.
“So what would happen to existing contracts for city services?” he asked smoothly, as though the question were of mere academic interest.
“Well, some of the details still need to be worked out, but I think it would be reasonable to consider a freeze on public tenders that would keep the current arrangements in place for a fixed period.”
Eric looked at Sondergaard as he said this. He was freelancing and wanted to make sure that he had her buy-in. Again, the High Rep nodded. Keep going.
“What kind of period?” Hasović asked.
“Three years or so.” Eric had just pulled that number out of thin air.
“I would think five years would be more . . . patriotic.”
“You may be right, but that would no doubt require some up-front assurances that the plan could win the support of the key partners in the current coalition government.”
“The BUP is prepared to throw its weight behind a plan that recognized the need for continuity as well as change,” Hasović suggested.
“Publicly?”
“Of course.”
The rest was details.
When Hasović left, the three internationals sat back at the table for a postmortem.
“You seemed quite sure of yourself there, Eric,” Wylie said with an edge of anger in his voice. “Don’t you think you might have promised too much in that exchange?”
“Almost certainly. But I didn’t want to miss that chance, and I didn’t think that either of you knew about his commercial stake in the trash business.”
The Wolf of Sarajevo Page 2