Lie in the Dark

by Dan Fesperman

  Vlado wondered what might have brought this on. Had Kasic’s curiosity simply been too much for him? Perhaps Krulic, the clerk from records, had felt a pang of bureaucratic conscience and phoned Kasic to alert him to Vlado’s unusual requests. Maybe someone in the morgue had been tipped to watch for anyone inquiring about an old man from Dobrinja. Or maybe Colonel Chevard had gotten wind of the strange request for information on shipping a parcel out of the city. Glavas might have said God knows what before he died, depending on how forceful they’d been with him before finishing him with a shot to the chest.

  The more Vlado thought about it, the more he realized how almost anyone he’d talked to during the past few days might have wittingly or unwittingly tipped higher-ups to his progress on the case.

  He suddenly felt such an amateur, a complete and utter naif. He was a fisherman set loose upon a reef full of sharks who only now had noticed the rot in the hull of his sinking craft. Far too late he considered the depth of his carelessness as it opened darkly before him.

  He’d let Toby, a reporter, see the transfer file, and God knew who Toby might have asked about it. He’d blabbed about Glavas to the gossipy director of the national art museum, a man who undoubtedly had his own uses for such information. Then there were his blunt questions to Neven himself, a man looking for a way out of a tight spot, a well-connected man who knew as well as anyone how to use the right sort of information for the right sort of leverage.

  Even if Krulic hadn’t already phoned Kasic, by tomorrow morning the entire ministry would be aware of exactly which files Vlado had requested. He couldn’t have drawn attention to his trail any better than if he’d lit a long line of torches in his wake. He’d barged along as if this were any sort of murder in any sort of city.

  So where did that leave him, other than vulnerable? He could tell all to Toby; then Toby would get a nice story. Or perhaps Toby would only ask a lot of embarrassing questions and write no story at all, considering that Vlado still had little actual proof. Either way, Vlado would likely end up with a bullet, and Damir as well. And for a panicky moment he wondered if Damir weren’t already dead, stashed in some alley or thrown into the river, having asked one too many sensitive questions, careless if only because Vlado had given him so little to go on.

  He could do as Kasic had asked, and turn over the worthless undercover men to the ministry for further questions. But even worthless men working at minor graft have families to support and small mouths to feed, so why sacrifice them? As he stumbled past that thought, his telephone rang.

  So, the lines were back up at last. But he was damned if he’d answer it now. With each ring he felt more claustrophobic, as if the air in the room were slowly being consumed by the sound.

  He picked up the hunk of meat, stuffing it in his coat pocket, then opened the door. The view was of nothing but mountains, outlined darkly in the pale, washed light of a rising moon that had just broken through the clouds. The graveyard below, out where Glavas and all the others lay beneath their mounds of mud and snow, glowed whitely, with just the hint of a sparkle.

  He stepped outside, shutting the door behind him on the ringing telephone, and walked briskly toward the center of town.

  Clouds had moved back across the moon by the time he reached the office, and from the look of the sky there would soon be more, further blotting the light on yet another night without electricity. But he was relieved to see that the office generators were up and running, and that everyone on his floor had left for the day. No Garovic to lean over his shoulder. He had just begun to calm his nerves amid the peace and quiet when his phone rang, as if the earlier call had stalked him down the hill.

  This time he picked up the receiver.

  It was Damir. Hearing the familiar voice sent a wave of relief over him. “Where the hell have you been, Vlado? I’ve been trying everywhere.”

  “Was that you ringing my house about twenty minutes ago?”

  “You mean you were there? Why didn’t you pick it up?”

  “I don’t know. Too skittish. My place had been searched.”

  “Mother of God. By who?”

  “Kasic’s people, if I had to guess.”

  “Mother of God,” he said again, in a lower voice this time. “Vlado, what’s going on with this case?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Too many people in high places with their fingerprints on it. You wouldn’t believe what I found in some files this afternoon. But it’s nothing we should dare discuss over the phone. Suffice it to say that you should trust no one. The further I go the more I wonder if maybe Garovic was right. Maybe I should’ve just left this one alone.”

  “Well, unfortunately I’ve got more bad news for you. Some U.N. guy’s been trying like hell to reach you all day. From the moment you left to see Kasic he must have called six times. So frantic he was half out of his mind. I told him he could talk to me just as easily, but he insisted that only you would do. He wanted your home number, but I wouldn’t give it to him. He wanted your address, too, but well, you know I’m not giving him that.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wouldn’t say. Wouldn’t leave a name or number, either. But I think he really is U.N. Definitely foreign, anyway.”

  “French?”

  “British, from the accent. And not your Nescafé man. I memorize voices of people that generous.”

  “Maybe he’ll call here.”

  “Maybe. But in the meantime he just called me here a few minutes ago.”

  “At home?”

  “Yes. How the hell he got the number I’d like to find out, but considering some of the women I know, I think I can guess. I don’t like it, Vlado. This Vitas case, we’re going to get ourselves killed. Or stuck in a trench somewhere.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he had to get hold of you. Had to meet with you. Now, and not tomorrow. I told him there was nothing I could do to arrange it because I didn’t know where you were, but the only way I could finally get rid of him was by agreeing to reach you at home tonight. For some reason he still can’t seem to get your home number. One of the benefits of your celibacy, I guess.”

  “But he wouldn’t leave his own number?”

  “Said it was too sensitive, that he can’t have you calling him when the wrong person might answer, not only at his office but wherever he’s living. So all he left was a message. He wants a meeting tonight, with you and you alone. Half an hour after curfew.”

  Vlado glanced at his watch.

  “Christ, that’s in forty minutes. Where?”

  “The end of Dakovica Street. Down by the river. He said it’s then or never. And Vlado?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said he’s convinced his life is in danger, yours as well. But he wouldn’t say why, or from who.”

  “And you’re sure he was British?”

  “As far as I could tell.”

  “But not French? You’re sure he couldn’t have been French?”

  “I’d know a French accent right away. My first woman was French, you know, back during the Olympics. I was only fourteen. You think I’d forget French accents after that? I’m just glad this guy reached me and not Garovic. Can you imagine how nuts he would have gone?”

  The mere thought of that possibility, of Garovic spluttering and red in the face, paralyzed by the sheer bureaucratic horror of the moment, was enough for some welcome levity. The two of them shared a laugh over the phone.

  Damir slipped into a confiding tone. “Vlado, I know you don’t think of me as much of a policeman.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Actually, in some ways it was. Not that Damir wasn’t smart, or didn’t have the skills. He just always seemed too interested in women, drink, and a good time to ever make a big investigation work. Vlado conceded to himself that perhaps one reason he’d held back had to do with this as well, not just his promise to Kasic, who’d proven unworthy of such loyalty anyway.

  “I’ve just quest
ioned your seriousness at times, that’s all. Your commitment. But you’re young. You’ll outgrow it. And who can learn to be a good investigator with a war on anyway? We’re all too busy saving our own skin.”

  “Well, one thing I’m serious about, and that’s backing up my colleagues. know you were always closer to Vasic before the war, that the two of you always worked better together. And I understand that. He had a wife, kids, like you. But Vlado, you shouldn’t go into this one alone. You don’t even know this man’s name and you’re going to go meet him only a block from where Vitas was killed, by the same person for all we know.”

  That had occurred to Vlado, and he was relieved at the offer of a backup.

  “Your help would be welcome, but it sounds like two of us might scare him away.”

  “So I’ll lay low. I’ll go early, work from the edges, just like our old boss always taught us back when we had a real boss. He’d be proud of me for a change.”

  The reference to Imamovic, their old chief, was somehow calming, as if the old man himself had just whispered a sage word of advice from beyond the grave.

  “If I leave now,” Damir continued, “I’ll be able to make it about ten minutes ahead of schedule. I can get the lay of the land before you arrive, and if things look shaky I’ll warn you away with a double whistle when I hear you approaching. Consider anything else, silence or otherwise, as an all-clear. As dark as it is tonight, it should be pretty easy to move around without being spotted.”

  “Just don’t spook him. If he’s as nervous as you say he is he’ll run at the first sign of being double-teamed. Do you have your gun?”

  “Always. You’re the one who doesn’t think you need to be armed in this city.”

  “Well, mine’s here in a drawer somewhere.” Vlado again checked his watch. “We have about thirty-five minutes. You’d better get moving if you’re going to make it.” Damir lived on the west side of the city. It would be a haul. Vlado needed only to walk a few blocks. He’d have some time to kill.

  “I’ll have to hustle,” Damir agreed. “But I’m younger than you. I’ll make it. See you there, then.”

  “And Damir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks. I’ll owe you one.”

  “One? More like five or six.”

  He hung up in mid-laugh.

  Vlado set down the receiver. Things were moving too fast. He looked again at his watch. He still hadn’t eaten and was famished, though now he had time for some of the meat and a cigarette. Maybe that would tamp down the excitement. Otherwise, everything else—the long walk to and from Zuc, the sleepless night in the trench, and all the day’s revelations—might overwhelm him just when he needed a clear head.

  He unwrapped the meat from its loose sheath of butcher paper. The smell made him salivate. He’d have to cut off a nice slice for Damir after this evening. Well, let’s not go overboard, he thought. Damir seemed pretty well stocked on his own lately.

  He reached into his desk for his Swiss Army knife, a coveted souvenir from his prewar trip to Berlin, then remembered he’d loaned it to Damir the week before.

  Perhaps this guy from the U.N., if he was indeed U.N., had the goods on Chevard, or even the whole operation. It might even have been the Brit he’d talked to the other day on the phone. Perhaps word of the investigation was spreading to some of the right people as well. Who knew, he told himself, this might pan out yet. But stay careful. And get some food in your stomach.

  He tugged at the top drawer of Damir’s desk. Locked. No problem. Vlado and his old partner Vasic had long ago discovered a ridiculous flaw of Titoist office furniture, one that not everyone knew, even now. In most offices, one key fit all, desk after desk, drawer after drawer, supervisors’ equipment excluded, of course. They hadn’t decided if the mistake had been a typical Communist snafu or a devious way to allow Party zealots and snitches to snoop on their coworkers. Whatever the case, Vasic and he had put it to use for many a practical joke until Imamovic found out. He’d requisitioned a whole new set of locks and keys, but, the system being what it was, they’d never arrived.

  So, Vlado took his own key and slipped it into Damir’s lock. It opened easily.

  My God, what a mess. Damir was even a bigger pack rat than he’d suspected. There were coffee-stained napkins, crumpled memos, torn scraps of paper with phone numbers—probably Damir’s version of a little black book—cassette tapes of heavy metal music by bands Vlado had never heard of, paperclips, and various other odds and ends. Vlado rifled through the pile, pushing small mounds of crumpled paper aside, wincing in pain as he pricked his thumb on a pushpin.

  Then, success. He spied the red handle of the army knife, lying at the bottom toward the back. But as he reached for it something else caught his eye, like the flash of a familiar face in a moving crowd. It was a small blue tunic with tiny gold buttons, handpainted. A tiny Austrian hussar, circa 1805, with his sword, still unpainted, raised boldly to the sky.

  Vlado picked up the soldier, holding him aloft in the weak fluorescent light. A victim of Napoleon, now briefly taken captive by Damir. Vlado shut and relocked the drawer, then stuffed the soldier deep in his pocket as he absorbed the implications of his discovery. He tried to come up with an innocent explanation, but there was none. Nor was there time to ask for one, now. He reached into his own desk and pulled his service revolver from a similarly chaotic mess of papers and tapes. Finding its chambers fully loaded, he clicked off the safety and stuffed the gun atop the soldier. The tiny man would now be his backup, he mused darkly.

  He grabbed his satchel, slinging the strap across his shoulder. Then he strolled across the office and out the door, leaving the meat unwrapped and uneaten on his desktop, and feeling very lonely indeed.

  CHAPTER 18

  On the way to the rendezvous point Vlado tried to calculate the depth of Damir’s betrayal. Perhaps he was only a glorified errand boy who’d conducted the search of Vlado’s apartment and done nothing else—it would have worked perfectly, any neighbor who’d seen him would have recognized him as a friend and never have suspected anything unseemly. Maybe he’d filed regular reports on Vlado’s comings and goings, his contacts, while little knowing the true role of Kasic. That would explain a few things, he supposed.

  And perhaps there really was a frantic U.N. man, who really was trying to reach Vlado with vital information.

  Then again, maybe Damir had engineered the whole thing, hoping to bring Vlado to a dark and vulnerable spot after curfew, where anyone killed would be written off as yet another victim of a sniper.

  Even if the more benign role was the case, Vlado asked himself if he would have done the same. No, he would never inform on a colleague, not without warning the colleague of the arrangement. But Damir had concluded it was okay. Betrayed by his own father, the embittered Damir had decided he could play that game as well. In Vlado’s eyes he was guilty. The only question was one of degree.

  If Vlado had the time to consider the matter further, and on a full stomach, he knew he might skip the meeting altogether. But his momentum had reached the point where he felt he had no choice but to plunge along.

  The walk was only a few blocks, but Vlado used his extra time for a roundabout approach. Going directly might have put him in place first. He might even have beaten Damir to the spot, a decided advantage. But a Damir who couldn’t be trusted might have been telephoning from anywhere a few minutes ago, including the Interior Ministry right down the street. And if Vlado was walking into a setup, everyone would be in place by now anyway, perhaps even expecting him ahead of schedule.

  The cloud cover was heavier than ever, blotting the moonlight from the sky, and the curfew had emptied the streets. Sniper fire and artillery had been light that day, as if everyone in the hills were saving their energy and ammunition for tonight’s Orthodox New Year. Heavy firing was expected, and the prospect had seemed to clear the bars and cafés early, with everyone heading home to their most secure rooms. Vlado doubted whether even the
prostitutes had stuck to their posts as late as usual. If one wanted to plot a meeting with as little chance of witnesses as possible, this was the night to do it.

  As he came within a block of the meeting point, he kept to the side of the street, as close as possible to an abandoned office building. He stopped and listened closely. Nothing but the faint gurgling of water, the sound creeping up from the steeply angled stone walls banking the Miljacka River. But there was something else, too, a sound he knew but couldn’t identify. It was a ticking sound, slower than a clock. It was the noise a car makes as its engine cools.

  He took another few steps, still unable to make out anything ahead. Then a few more, and there it was, a car. No, two cars, facing each other about ten yards apart, only one was easier to spot because it was white. From its silhouette it seemed to be a jeep, and a white jeep could only mean U.N. He supposed that was reassuring, but the second car wasn’t. Damir didn’t own one.

  Vlado waited a few moments, breathing heavily against the pressure building in his chest. He considered turning and walking quietly back toward the city center. Let them make the next move, whoever they were. But where would he stay in the meantime? Where would he work? There was no getting out of this now, and there was certainly no getting out of Sarajevo. He slowly took three more steps, then stopped when a voice broke the silence.

  “Vlado. Is that you?”

  It was Damir, sounding happy, welcoming. Vlado eased his satchel aside and reached into his pocket, clutching for the gun. A cigarette lighter flicked on, illuminating Damir’s face. He was smiling, casual. He might have been sitting on a bar stool waiting for a pal for all the worry apparent on his face.