Killing Pilgrim

by Alen Mattich

  “You’ve done this before,” della Torre said. “I’m assuming this isn’t something you learned at college.”

  “You know, Marko, you are a very perceptive man,” she said, mocking him gently. “Now, I don’t mind you boys watching. In fact I rather like boys watching. But you mustn’t talk. Not while I’m getting it just right.”

  Rebecca took steady shot after steady shot, making small adjustments to the sight and the gun after each. At first della Torre and Strumbić focused on her, how her upper body wrapped itself around the rifle, how her hamstrings and buttocks flexed and became taut with each round and then relaxed until the next one. Her legs were smooth, unblemished, with the lightest bit of colour, stretched open in an inverted V to brace herself.

  Della Torre noticed that Strumbić was crouching a metre behind Rebecca, as if he were sighting along her rifle to the target, though he suspected the cop was looking no farther than her ass. He could hardly blame Strumbić. Della Torre would also have liked to run his hands up those legs from where the short socks ended just above the tops of her boots, up her calves and the back of her knees, along the toned hamstrings to the cuffs of the shorts, and beyond. If her finger hadn’t been on the trigger of a sniper’s rifle.

  After a while, della Torre turned his attention to the weapon. He was surprised at how well the silencer worked. There was a metallic clunk, more like a heavy steel spring being released, followed by the clink of the spent shell casing hitting other casings.

  Eventually she sat up. Strumbić had disappeared down the hill to get out of the blazing sun.

  “Want a go?”

  As she spoke, a deep roar built through the valley like summer thunder, except it came out of a clear sky. Rebecca stood up, rifle raised. And then, at exactly their eye level, a Yugoslav air force fighter jet flew past. The pilot turned his head towards them. Della Torre resisted an urge to wave. Rebecca tracked the jet with her rifle, eyes on the scope.

  “He needed a shave,” she said as the roar of the jet filled the air and then faded with a long finish, the plane disappearing from sight.

  “MiG-21. Balalaika,” della Torre said. “The Yugoslavs are testing approaches to Zagreb. He’ll probably set off the air-raid alerts, but if he’s carrying bombs they’re going to be too late.”

  “Think he’s carrying bombs?”

  “Probably. But I don’t think he’s going to be using them. Not yet. They’ve been flying over to warn the Croat government what’s in store for them.”

  “He was going slow enough that I’m pretty sure I could have knocked the visor off his helmet. He was exactly in range. I put it at around 250 metres. If I’d pulled the trigger he’d have made a pretty big hole in the hillside. They’d have chalked it down to an accident.”

  “You should have pulled the trigger, then.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to. Other people’s wars and all that.”

  “You know, I really do believe you wanted to do it.”

  “I’ve never brought down a MiG-21,” she said. “You going to give the rifle a go, or do you think there are more Balalaikas heading our way?”

  “I doubt it. They’ll be coming from all corners. Testing Zagreb’s reflexes, I think. But they don’t want to test so much that they run into somebody with their finger on a trigger, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. Here,” she said lowering the rifle back to the ground.

  “Sure. It’s been a while since I played with one of these. See if I still can.”

  “I won’t bother to tell you to squeeze the trigger as gently and smoothly as you would a nipple.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Though not everybody likes their nipples squeezed gently.” She smiled before adding, “I’m told.”

  He lay down on the rug, smelling the hot earth and dried grass underneath. Grasshoppers sprang madly around him, distracting him as they bounced off his arm and head. Rebecca refilled the magazine for him.

  “It’s a semi, so you have to squeeze off each shot. There isn’t any wind, so you don’t need to adjust the flight. I’ve calibrated it to 260 metres. The focus dials are on the right side.”

  He was surprised at how well the kick was absorbed by the stock. He didn’t know the calibre, but it was clearly more than nine millimetres. A .338, he guessed.

  “Nice rifle.”

  “Isn’t it. I’ll take a few more shots just to make sure before I pack this up. If you want to join our friend, take the other two cases down for me, will you. Put the big one in the car and take the smaller one to the house. Maybe we can play with the radios. They’re a new system and I’d like to see how well they work.”

  The cases put a strain on his weak left arm, but he managed. He did as he’d been asked and joined Strumbić, who was sitting under the cherry tree. The cherries were long gone, the blackened and dried remains of the ones that had escaped Strumbić and the birds scattered across the ground. Lumps of dried yellow resin clung to the tree’s ancient black bark.

  Strumbić took a tumbler, grown opaque with age, and poured it half full with deep yellow wine out of a plastic jerry can, topping it up with soapy mineral water out of a tall bottle.

  “I cooled it in the cistern.” A big concrete cistern to catch rainwater was dug into the ground on the other side of the house. Strumbić kept water bottles in it, attached by their necks to nylon ropes that were anchored to a steel ring at the top, guaranteeing himself a cool drink even on the hottest days when the power failed. Della Torre could see a new metal shutter to the wine cellar’s window, and a patched-up frame. So that was how Strumbić had got out.

  They could hear the steady clank of the rifle shots higher up the hill.

  “She’s something, this one,” said Strumbić, shaking his head. “If you haven’t got your sights on her, mind if I give her a go? Actually, what am I saying? I’ll give her a go anyway.”

  “Be my guest. But she’ll wear you down to a toothpick.”

  “You say that like you know what you’re talking about.”

  “What about your girlfriend? I won’t even mention your wife,” della Torre said, ignoring Strumbić’s comment.

  “Fuck the wife. As for the girlfriend, fuck her too. Gone, and good riddance. Stupid little cow. She was screwing one of my men and didn’t think I’d notice.”

  “What happened to your man?”

  “He’s doing traffic. On an island in the middle of the highway.”

  “A promotion, then.”

  “He’s staying there until a bus hits him.”

  “Nice to know you’re not someone to bear a grudge.”

  Strumbić laughed, offering della Torre a cigarette.

  “You know, I’ve always loved coming up here,” della Torre said wistfully.

  “Always liked having you up. Always considered you a friend, Gringo.”

  “Till you set those killers on me.”

  “We’re not getting into that again, are we? You know very well I had to. Didn’t want to do it, but the people you were playing games with weren’t the sort I felt like fucking with.”

  “Maybe.” Della Torre knew Strumbić hadn’t had much choice. The Bosnians had come to him for help to set up della Torre. And Strumbić, seeing which way the wind was blowing, had made the phone call. There hadn’t been any real way out of it. Sure, Strumbić had been offered inducements. Like a few thousand Deutschmarks. And being allowed to live. But della Torre could hardly blame Strumbić; he’d been as much at fault for selling Strumbić the files in the first place. Stupid. Was he being stupid again, getting sucked into this American adventure? Or could you really call it stupidity if you had no say in the matter?

  They smoked and drank the potent wine mixed with water. Della Torre contemplated a fat spider working her way around her web, which glistened in the crook of the che
rry tree. The spider was using a long leg to test the integrity of each anchoring strand: busy, quick, but efficient. When a small fly flew into the web only to break through, he watched her run to the spot and mend the damage.

  Strumbić was slicing some homemade dried sausage when Rebecca joined them. Tiny drops of sweat were beaded on her forehead and her upper lip. Della Torre could almost taste the hot saltiness of her skin. Her blouse clung to her breasts. The big square sunglasses shaded her eyes, but she clearly knew exactly what both men were thinking.

  “Somebody going to pour me a drink? Unless there’s a mint julep on offer, I’ll have exactly what you gentlemen are having.” She took a long drink of the watered-down wine and then poured herself a glass of mineral water on its own. “Tastes like somebody had a bath in it.”

  “Is water from tap also,” said Strumbić.

  “That’s all right, I’ll hide the flavour with a bit more of that yellow wine there,” she said, helping herself to a slice of dried sausage.

  “I thought you just wanted to talk to the Montenegrin,” della Torre said. “That’s a lot of artillery we’re taking just to talk to someone.”

  “Sometimes people need to know you’re serious in case they start to worry you’re wasting their time.”

  “And what happens when they come armed too?”

  “We’ll have bulletproof vests,” she laughed. “Nobody’s going to be doing any shooting. All we’re doing is bringing some insurance.”

  “And the people who are going to meet us down there?”

  “Just some communications backup. We Americans like to do things properly. Don’t we, Marko?”

  “Relax, Gringo. Is like holiday,” Strumbić intervened.

  “Gringo?” Rebecca was amused.

  “Nickname. I don’t like it very much, but it stuck.”

  “I like it. Gringo,” she said, smiling. “Like you stepped right out of a cowboy movie.”

  She turned her head towards Strumbić, though her eyes momentarily stayed on della Torre.

  “So, Mr. Strumbić, I hear you know a little about Dubrovnik,” she said.

  “Please. Julius,” he said, making like he was offended at her show of formality.

  “Julius,” she said, correcting herself.

  “Is very beautiful. Pearl of Adriatic is called.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go. I hear it’s lovely all around there.”

  “Is very beautiful. Most beautiful island is Šipan. My island.”

  “You have an island?” she asked innocently, barely masking her disbelief.

  “No island. House, little house on island. Is very nice. Very quiet,” Strumbić said getting into his stride. “Nobody near, on beach. But very quiet island. But not so far from Dubrovnik. Half-hour, a little by boat, a little by car.”

  “No one lives there?”

  “Not many people. Old people only. Young people go to work in Dubrovnik or go to America. Two small villages and much old buildings. Old palaces falling down from time of Dubrovnik nobles. Not so much tourists. Sometimes come on yacht.” He pronounced the word as it was written. “Not many come on ferry. So is all peace and quiet.”

  “Sounds divine. Maybe we can go swimming there. In privacy, for a day or two. We can have a little break maybe. I love skinny-dipping.”

  “Skinny-dip?” Strumbić was puzzled.

  “She means swimming naked,” della Torre said, breaking his silence. He’d been admiring how she reeled Strumbić in.

  Strumbić gave a broad, satisfied leer. “Yes, I like naked swim, naturische.”

  “Maybe it would be nice to stay on your island. For a few days, because I need to be in Dubrovnik . . .” she said.

  “Yes. Of course. You and me.” He paused for a while and eventually added: “And Gringo.”

  Once they’d finished their wine, they tested out the radios, small units that buckled onto a belt with a forked wire, one end leading to an earpiece and the other to a tiny microphone that could be clipped onto a collar. The radios were voice-activated, with precedence between the units so that they could all talk. Della Torre and Strumbić marvelled at this technology even more enthusiastically than they’d admired the weapons.

  Before they left, Rebecca went back to the target and dug all the slugs out of the tree, dropping them into a Ziploc bag. Della Torre noticed she’d already picked up all the bullet casings.

  Rebecca, Strumbić, and della Torre were damp with the heat when they got back into the car, and she turned the air conditioning on full blast for the trip back to Zagreb. The day had felt almost like a holiday. Except that della Torre was troubled by this woman who lied shamelessly and shot guns like a professional. And by the black Hilux they passed in Samobor.

  SWEDEN, FEBRUARY/MARCH 1986

  The boy was curled up in the passenger seat. He’d wrapped himself in the red and green tartan blanket. It had taken a long while to get the chill out of the car, even though the Montenegrin had turned the heat on full.

  At first the boy had complained about being dragged out of the warm apartment, but the hot air and the sound of tires on gritted road sent him into a doped-up slumber. The Montenegrin knew he wouldn’t wake easily. Most nights he’d fall asleep on the floor of the flat, not responding even when the Montenegrin lifted him onto the sofa and tucked the blanket around him.

  He was a strange boy. Efficient. Useful. Yet a dopehead. Pretty, in a hungry, pinched way, but never seemed to have any company or any friends. In fact, the Montenegrin had never seen him with anyone else. The boy didn’t talk about himself, or about anyone else, really.

  The post, mostly circulars, that came to the apartment was in somebody else’s name, a Turkish name, it seemed to the Montenegrin. The boy threw all the letters away. All the bills, he said, were automatically covered by the welfare office. There was no telephone.

  The Montenegrin asked the boy where he usually lived, but the boy was noncommittal. He seemed mostly to live in Malmo, though he wasn’t clear about whether he lived there alone or with others. All he knew was that the boy was a Serb with an Albanian surname from a village in Kosovo, where his parents now lived. The Montenegrin didn’t know whether the boy had any brothers or sisters.

  The boy seemed to have plenty of money, but spent little. He said he did some low-key dealing to students at the university, but only ever carried enough on himself for his own use. He was keeping a watch on things in Stockholm for the Serb. But what that entailed, the Montenegrin never figured out, and in the end he guessed the boy was an opportunist who had found an opportunity to sell dope in the city and live for free.

  Other than that, the boy didn’t seem to do much. He played pool in a couple of local pool halls, mostly against Kurds or Sudanese immigrants, never gambling more than a couple of kronor at a time and usually winning. He watched television. And he did math puzzles. Pages of them.

  The boy washed his clothes in the building’s basement laundrette, but he didn’t seem to have much in the way of a wardrobe. A couple of pairs of jeans. T-shirts and brushed cotton shirts, and some wool sweaters. He had a sleeping bag he seldom used and a towel that he dried over a radiator. He had barely any toiletries and never cooked, restricting himself to sandwiches made from white processed bread and salami, and milk drunk straight from a red carton. Hot meals he took at Turkish or Kurdish restaurants. Kebabs with spicy sauce.

  The boy’s contacts, probably made through the Serb, clearly trusted him. He’d got the gun on consignment and then let the Montenegrin choose his commission after agreeing to the weapon. The Montenegrin, not expecting to use the Smith & Wesson, had considered asking the boy to find him a hunting rifle with a scope and a silencer. The boy had made getting a gun surprisingly easy.

  The boy said he’d never been arrested, though the Montenegrin was skeptical — the boy seemed to know a lot about the Swedish police and how
they operated.

  The boy puzzled him. He was like an inexplicable gift from the gods. The Montenegrin knew he’d have had a much harder time without him.

  The Montenegrin had city maps and guidebooks. But being led around by the boy had allowed him to ignore the inconsequential and irrelevant. Best of all, the boy had helped him to become anonymous in Stockholm’s immigrant community.

  He switched on the car radio. It was tuned to a pop station, which the Montenegrin figured would be as good as any other. The music didn’t matter to him. He was waiting for an announcer’s grave tones signalling that the prime minister’s assassination had become public knowledge.

  Though he didn’t understand Swedish, the jokey, light-hearted chat between songs told him the news hadn’t yet broken.

  He drove within the speed limit. The roads were well gritted and the sky was clear, but he wasn’t used to driving in that sort of cold and was especially cautious about doing so at night. It took about half an hour to get past the suburbs and into the country. From there he’d have another hour or slightly more to get to the place where the boy had taken him to test-fire the Smith & Wesson. He wasn’t sure about finding it in the dark, but left that worry for later.

  It was a quiet spot, down a rough track about twenty minutes from the main road, in the heart of deep woodland. Hunters and loggers, heading farther into the forest towards a big lake, kept it passable. But the area the boy had led him to was undisturbed. He said no one came there, even in the summer. It was a logging plantation, but the trees were too small and wouldn’t be taken down for another ten years. Until then, there was no reason for anyone to go there.

  When the Montenegrin had asked him how he knew of the place, that he was worried it was somewhere the mafia went routinely to test out their guns, the boy said they never went that far out of Stockholm, even to bury bodies. He just happened to know the place, he said.

  The Montenegrin navigated by the clock. The highway looked all the same to him, but he remembered the road interchange before the one that was his exit and he watched carefully for it, allowing a few big trucks to pass him along the way. Otherwise there was little traffic.