Slobodan carefully put his glass down. His lower back hurt. He’d become an old geezer, not so nimble anymore, and seriously doubted whether, at the age of fifty, he still had the gift of reinventing himself. Which of his employees did he still know by name? Could he recall whether they were married or what their favourite food was? His chief occupation now was finding out who was likely to be a threat. Everybody wanted his ear, and everybody held out their hands for rewards. So, the bureaucrats in Brussels had increased the grants for returnees, had they? Fantastic. Another opportunity to line your pockets. But he was no fool. The job was over, Kosovo was finished, and every last drop had been squeezed out of the whole business – especially after the affair with the elderly couple. Slobodan stretched, poured himself another drink and put on his glasses.
The blueprints that Jonathan had unrolled on his desk yesterday had almost covered the entire table. They showed two ground plans, of a raised ground floor and first floor respectively. A living space of almost three hundred square metres all told, though large sections of cross-hatching indicated that barely a quarter of the building was habitable at present. It was an old pile, built in the mid-nineteenth century, facing straight onto a street, with no driveway or swimming pool, and his first reaction was ‘Thanks, Johnny, but no thanks.’
‘It’s a gem,’ Jonathan contradicted him. ‘It’s tailor-made for you.’
Slobodan studied the floor plan for what must have been the tenth time now, and it gradually began to dawn on him that the man was right. This property had potential. Central location, turn of the century, with all the frills, and on top of it all a huge garden. Slobodan could picture it laid out with boxwood hedges, stone statues and water features. He could turn this pile of rubble into a little castle, could build himself a proper residence, perfect for musical soirées and all that other intellectual tosh, round-table meetings and glamorous receptions. The building would give him an aura that would help propel him on to more exalted roles and more highprofile tasks. There was a knock at the door.
Božena stuck her head in. ‘What’s keeping you?’ she chirped. ‘Put your shoes on – hurry up. The guests are arriving.’
He emptied his glass. Jonathan wasn’t stupid. He’d try and crank up the price, no doubt. Slobodan had to impress upon him that a deal like this was also an investment in his future, a significant step on the career ladder. At least, it was if Jonathan didn’t want to forever remain Johnny with the silly bicycle and the dress handkerchief, who hung around the tennis courts in his spare time.
‘Didn’t we agree that you’d clip the hair in your nose?’ Božena was tugging at his tie and straightening the knot. ‘Your welcoming remarks are in thirty minutes; I’ll give you a signal. Don’t go on too long, try to include a joke or two and don’t forget to open the buffet.’
Slobodan pushed his thumb into the collar and tried to free his Adam’s apple. ‘Has Maček arrived?’ he asked. ‘And old Pašić?’
Božena shook her head. ‘Listen to me now. Rozena’s performance will start at ten, and the running order’s as follows: the light will be dimmed, spotlight on Rozena. No announcement, no explanation. She’ll be standing on the lower part of the staircase and will start singing “Happy Birthday”. Pure and simple. You’ll take my hand and we’ll walk up to the front together. Please keep eye contact with Rozena, but also with me. Then there’ll be applause, you’ll kiss her hand and then leave the stage to her. She’ll sing three songs from her new album, plus an encore. The DJ and the lighting technician know the score, the media have also been informed. The guests will lap it up.’
On the way to the reception, he put his arm around her waist. He was as much in love with her as he had been on the very first day they met, and Božena snuggled up to him amid the blizzard of flashing light bulbs.
Slobodan shook people’s hands and received kisses on both cheeks. The minister from the Home Office hove in view; the little mouse at his side was probably his intern. The transport secretary had sent his deputy, but he couldn’t immediately spot anybody from the ministry. The anchor of the morning magazine programme and the editor-in-chief of the free newspaper cosied up to the programme director. The nancy boy without a tie was probably the new star of that TV soap opera, and there was also the odd bit of eye candy among the ladies. It was a good mix. Božena had done a fabulous job, as per usual. Out of the corner of his eye Slobodan spotted a bobbing blonde ponytail.
Dressed in a long apron, the little bitch was balancing a tray with drinks and walking directly towards him. Slobodan embraced Božena and turned with his wife in the opposite direction, where he immediately ran into Jonathan.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ his aide whispered in a hoarse voice.
Slobodan patted him on the shoulder and made to squeeze past, still with Božena hanging on his arm, but Jonathan wouldn’t give up.
‘We’ve got to talk now,’ the man said with a calm determination that shocked Slobodan. ‘I wouldn’t insist if it weren’t important.’
‘Would you care for a glass of bubbly, sir?’ Diana curtsied mockingly.
Slobodan took a glass and hissed at Jonathan, ‘In my office.’ He felt Božena’s hand on his back and added, ‘After Rozena’s performance.’
Božena propelled him gently in the direction of the photographers. Slobodan straightened his back and looked into the camera lenses, just as he had rehearsed in front of the mirror. Even if he was being lauded today, a statesman could not afford to forget for one second: these were serious times. And enemies were lurking everywhere.
25
‘Udbine Street’, Milena muttered while indicating. For an entire quarter of an hour, they had been criss-crossing the built-up area of Košutnjak: Milena hunched over the steering wheel searching for a parking space, and Tanja on the passenger seat chewing her ear off.
‘I don’t believe it. The German ambassador is offering you a job on a silver platter – and what do you do? You hum and haw!’
‘I’m not humming and hawing,’ Milena countered. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘Why?’ Tanja exclaimed. ‘The reform of the justice system was always your pet project. Alexander’s fought long and hard to get the funding, you encouraged him, now the German foreign office is making the money available, and – well, if you want my opinion, it’s your duty to not cop out now and to make sure the funds flow into the right channels. You’re not doing this for nothing, after all.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Thirteen months’ pay annually?’ Tanja enquired.
‘Plus bonuses.’
‘Paid holiday?’
‘And a warm office in the German embassy.’
‘So what more do you want?’
Suddenly a cyclist loomed in the headlights. A small red rear light. The man was cycling in the middle of the road, and the pedals with their yellow reflectors were moving up and down with incredible speed.
Milena slammed on the brakes. ‘Is this guy crazy? Has he got a death wish?’ She honked, but the man didn’t even turn around. He disappeared as instantly as he had come into view.
‘Cycling in a formal suit – cool!’ Tanja said.
‘More likely tired of life.’ Milena changed down to first gear. Cyclists were as rare in Belgrade as the raisins in Aunt Borka’s Gugelhupf cake. If you happened upon one of these rarities, you were so surprised you had to remind yourself that they actually belonged there. Milena gauged the parking space and put the car into reverse. ‘Just assuming I sign on the dotted line and take the job, what about my students? And what will happen with my postdoctoral thesis?’
‘“The War Crimes in Yugoslavia”?’ Tanja paused theatrically and then declared almost formally, ‘You can forget about it. I think it’s fantastic. Instead of dealing with the past all the time, you’d have to apply yourself to the present for a change. To Alexander, for instance.’
‘I want to finally see legal reform implemented, period,’ Milena said, ‘and Alexander wants the same.’
‘Then it’s settled, isn’t it?’
Milena did not answer. The offer had come at a bad time; she was simply not in the right frame of mind for it. She turned and attempted to park in such a way that the Lada was not blocking the driveway.
‘In!’ She yanked on the handbrake, as Tanja undid her seatbelt and flung open her door against a tree.
They had to walk back quite a way in order to reach Prague Street. Up here, in the hills above Belgrade, it was considerably cooler than down in the city, with an aroma of the oncoming spring. They teetered on their high heels past hedges, castiron railings and walls with cameras on top of them, which reminded passers-by – more or less discreetly – that the inhabitants possessed the kind of wealth that normal people could only dream of. And looking at the security personnel lurking in the driveways, with an arsenal of weapons dangling from their belts and stern faces, you got a good idea of how determinedly that wealth had been amassed and how tenaciously it would be defended against all comers.
Milena took her friend’s arm. In her mind, she ran through her action plan for the night. In principle, she only had to wait to strike up a conversation with Slobodan Božović. She had to find out whether he had any idea of the condition of the house in Talinovac where the old couple, the Valetićs, had been resettled and abandoned to their fate. He would most likely try and shrug off responsibility onto the local officials. A nice cop-out, naturally.
‘You know what makes me angry?’ said Milena. ‘There are plenty of political reasons alone not to give up Kosovo at any price. Which means that there’s a continuing need to file restitution claims. An elderly couple with no future ahead of them fits the bill perfectly. They’re promised a little house in the old country, and a life without fear. And in the event the promises aren’t kept, if the two oldies get killed in the process – so much the better. You can blame anything on Kosovan Albanians. They are responsible for anything and everything; they even kill defenceless people. You just play the nationalist card.’
‘There’s a lot of truth in what you say,’ said Tanja. ‘But it’s a bit heavy for small talk.’
‘The key question is,’ Milena continued, ‘was this actually what happened? Did Kosovan Albanians really kill the old couple? It sounds plausible, but there’s no way to corroborate it. If only we had the material that old Miloš Valetić apparently collected, if we could just have a look through it, Siniša and I, we’d probably know more.’
‘So what’s stopping you?’
‘The material’s with Goran, the son, and Goran has disappeared. Vanished off the face of the Earth. But I get the impression he’s been here, to see the minister, Slobodan Božović.’
‘When?’
‘About ten days ago.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘I can tell you exactly,’ Milena said, and started rummaging around in her handbag when somebody from the other side of the street called out, ‘Tanja Pavlović!’
A woman in a black dress slammed the door of her SUV, let the indicator flash quickly and strode across the street in ankle boots that exposed her well-toned calf muscles. The owner of a large outlet store, she was well known throughout the whole of Serbia for her opinionated appearances on commercial television. She not only held the whole nation in thrall with her shopping tips and must-haves, but had also become a major driver in the economy.
In parallel with this woman’s meteoric rise, Tanja was working on honing her external appearance to perfection. Her ambitious aim was to halve her body weight: liposuction had already relieved her of fifteen kilos of fat, with fifteen more due to follow; after that, the real work would begin – a nip and tuck, and the result would be a figure of dreamlike proportions. Tanja was an unrivalled artist whose art came at a price and was a trophy to show off. On the way from the admission check at the garden gate to the tented cloakroom, Tanja was hugged and kissed by at least five women, who stroked her silk apricot suit and admired her shoes with green straps. No one would have dreamt of making snide remarks about her crow’s feet or that the fact that her jacket couldn’t be buttoned over her ample bosom.
Only one woman pretended never to have clapped eyes on Tanja before, and she in turn was very discreet. But Milena knew that this TV anchorwoman had recently checked into Tanja’s clinic for some plastic surgery, a small correction in the genital area which was sometimes deemed necessary when a certain male deficiency had to be compensated for – in this case, that of an opposition politician with whom the talk-show queen had been playing the dream couple for quite some time now. The politician had gained notoriety in this legislative period by posing for the cameras with a bare chest and a giant snake draped around his neck. Milena sighed. Women voluntarily went under the knife at the first sight of a wrinkle, for a nip and tuck, an injection here and a bit of liposuction there, until the strain could be seen on their faces, whereas men did displacement activities instead and didn’t give a damn if their beer bellies bulged over their belts and their hair grew thickly only on their backs.
Milena stepped aside to make room for some people who were posing for a photographer at the entrance, and sheepishly tugged at her trousers. A delicate silver racing bike was leaning against the side of the house. With its slender tyres and wine-red leather saddle, it looked like a decorative lifestyle accessory in these surroundings. But the rear light was glimmering weakly, betraying the fact that the bike had been ridden only a few minutes ago. By the suicidal Mr Cool?
‘That’s possible,’ said Tanja, looking around with interest.
Everybody was pushing forward towards the host, who was receiving his guests while standing next to his wife and a display cabinet full of little glass animals. The room was too low for the chandelier and too cramped for the multitude of people. Potted plants reached all the way to the ceiling and brushed against the bald spots and coiffed hair, and it struck Milena that she would be extremely unlikely to engage the minister tonight in any conversation involving the words ‘Kosovo’ and ‘Valetić’. That was as absurd an idea as squeezing herself into these trousers, which she hadn’t worn since her divorce proceedings nine years ago. The clingy material was riding up her bum, which had increased in size in the meantime, and her trousers were at half-mast above the shoes, which had definitely not been the plan. She could only hope that the velvet jacket was long enough to hide the problem at the back. And Tanja, instead of supporting her, was nowhere to be seen. Milena would have liked to have quietly melted away herself – like the waiter, who at that moment was making a discreet exit via a door behind the spiral staircase. The guy looked familiar.
‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’ a voice asked. A young woman presented a tray with various glasses on it to Milena, indifferently looking past her as she did so.
‘Don’t we know each other?’ Milena was surprised. ‘From the Zeppelin? You’re Goran’s girlfriend, aren’t you?’
‘Ex-girlfriend, if you don’t mind.’
‘Diana, I’m glad to see you. I think I just saw your colleague.’ Milena looked around. ‘Is Goran here as well?’
Diana arranged the glasses on the tray. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘He was here not so long ago.’ Milena again started rummaging around in her bag.
‘Here?’ Diana repeated. ‘At Slobo Božović’s house?’
‘On April sixth, I think.’ Milena waved the little piece of paper in front of Diana’s nose. ‘Some time after nine p.m.’
The glasses started to slide as Diana turned to look at the parking ticket. ‘Udbine Street…’ She looked at Milena quizzically. ‘So?’
‘That’s just round the corner from here.’ Milena put the slip back into her bag. ‘Could we talk somewhere? I think Goran’s in trouble.’
At that moment, there came a gentle ringing sound. The minister was clinking his glass with a small object, which caused the chatter and background noise to suddenly quieten down.
Diana bent down to pick up two co
ffee cups that someone had put on the stairs. ‘Follow me. But be discreet about it.’
Slobodan Božović stood on a small, slightly raised rostrum in front of a white wall unit, looked benignly at the assembled crowd and announced, ‘Dear friends, esteemed guests!’
Diana disappeared through the terrace door.
‘Don’t worry,’ Slobodan joked. ‘I’m not about to give you a speech setting out my political principles tonight.’ He paused theatrically. ‘“Principles?” do I hear you say? “Good old Božović wouldn’t know what principles are!”’
In the laughter that followed, Milena made her way past the giant flat screen showing an image of a brightly burning fire, walked past the white curtains and carefully slid open the terrace door.
‘Fifty years, ladies and gentlemen,’ she heard Slobodan continue behind her. ‘Half a century. What can you say about that? Only so much…’ Quietly, Milena stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind her and looked around.
Among the hydrangeas and the torches stood a statue. The earth around it had been carefully spread with compost, and the border separating it from the lawn was accentuated by a small box hedge. The plastic chairs had been piled on top of each other and covered with shrink-wrap, as had as the cushions on the swing seat on the far side of the terrace, which was swaying smoothly in the breeze. Behind it, almost in the flower bed, a kind of catering workstation had been set up: two tables made up the work surface, with plastic tubs for the dishes on top and buckets containing washing-up water underneath.
Diana busied herself by cleaning trays. Without looking up from what she was doing, she asked, ‘What makes you think Goran’s in trouble?’
Milena came up to her. ‘Because he’s hiding. Because he can’t be found. It’s like he’s running away from something.’
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