Avenger (9 page)

Banja Luka was a fiercely Serbian stronghold well to the north of Travnik and across the Vlasic mountain chain. The ECMM officer there was a Danish major, Lasse Bjerregaard. He said that the previous evening, i.e. 15 May, he had been taking a drink in the bar of the Bosna Hotel when he witnessed a blazing row between two Serbs in camouflage uniform. One had clearly been in a rage at the other and was screaming abuse at him in Serbian. He slapped the face of the junior man several times, but the offending party did not answer back, indicating the clear superiority of the slapper.

When it was over the major tried to seek an explanation from the barman, who spoke halting English which the Dane spoke fluently, but the barman shrugged and walked away in a very rude manner which was unlike him. The next morning the uniformed men were gone and the major never saw them again.

The Tracker thought it was the longest shot of his life but he called the ECMM office in Banja Luka. Another change of posting; a Greek came on the line. Yes, the Dane had returned home the previous week. The Tracker called London suggesting they ask the Danish Defence Ministry. London came back in three hours. Fortunately the name was not so common. Jensen would have been a problem. Major Bjerregaard was on furlough and his number was in Odense.

The Tracker caught him that evening when he returned from a day on the water with his family in the summer heatwave. Major Bjerregaard was as helpful as he could be. He remembered the evening of 15 May quite clearly. There was, after all, precious little for a Dane to do in Banja Luka; it had been a very lonely and boring posting.

As each evening, he had gone to the bar around 7.30 for a pre-dinner beer. About half an hour later a small group of Serbs in camouflage uniform had entered the bar. He did not think they were Yugoslav Army because they did not have unit flashes on their shoulders.

They seemed very full of themselves and ordered drinks all round, slivovitz with beer chasers, a lethal combination. Several rounds of drinks later, the major was about to adjourn to the dining room because the noise was becoming deafening when another Serb entered the bar. He seemed to be the commander, because the rest subsided.

He spoke to them in Serbian and he must have ordered them to come with him. The men began to swig their beers back and put their packs of cigarettes and lighters in their uniform pockets. Then one of them offered to pay.

The commander went berserk. He started screaming at the subordinate. The rest went deathly quiet. So did the other customers. And the barman. The tirade went on, accompanied by two slaps to the face. Still no one protested. Finally the leader stormed out. Crestfallen and subdued, the others followed. No one offered to pay for the drinks.

The major had tried to secure an explanation from the barman with whom, after several weeks of drinking, he was on good terms. The man was white-faced. The Dane thought it might be rage at the scene in the bar, but it looked more like fear. When asked what it was all about, he shrugged and stalked to the other end of the now empty bar, and pointedly faced the other way.

"Did the commander rage at anyone else?" asked the Tracker.

"No, just at the one who tried to pay," said the voice from Denmark.

"Why him alone, major? There is no mention in your report as to possible reason."

"Ah. Didn't I put that in? Sorry. I think it was because the man tried to pay with a hundred-dollar bill."

Chapter SEVEN

The Volunteer

THE TRACKER PACKED HIS GEAR AND DROVE NORTH FROM Travnik. He was passing from Bosnian (Muslim) territory into Serb-held country. But a British Union Jack fluttered from a pennant above the Lada, and with luck that ought to deter long-range pot-shots. If stopped, he intended to rely on his passport, letter-proof that he was just writing about relief aid, and generous presents of Virginia-tobacco cigarettes bought from the Vitez barracks shop.

If all that failed, his pistol was fully loaded, close to hand and he knew how to use it.

He was stopped twice, once by a Bosnian militia patrol as he left Bosnia-controlled country, and once by a Yugoslav Army patrol south of Banja Luka. Each time his explanation, documents and presents worked. He rolled into Banja Luka five hours later.

The Bosna Hotel was certainly never going to put the Ritz out of business, but it was about all the town had. He checked in. There was plenty of room. Apart from a French TV crew, he judged he was the only foreigner staying there. At seven that evening he entered the bar. There were three other drinkers, all Serbs and all seated at tables, and one barman. He straddled the stool at the bar.

"Hallo. You must be Dusko."

He was open, friendly, charming. The barman shook the proffered hand.

"You been here before?"

"No, first time. Nice bar. Friendly bar."

"How you know my name?"

"Friend of mine was posted here recently. Danish fellow. Lasse Bjerregaard. He asked me to say hi if I was passing through."

The barman relaxed considerably. There was no threat here.

"You Danish?"

"No, British."

"Army?"

"Heavens no. Journalist. Doing a series of articles about aid agencies. You'll take a drink with me?"

Dusko helped himself to his own best brandy.

"I would like to be journalist. One day. Travel. See the world."

"Why not? Get some experience on the local paper, then go to the big city. That's what I did."

The barman shrugged in resignation.

"Here? Banja Luka? No paper."

"So try Sarajevo. Even Belgrade. You're a Serb. You can get out of here. The war won't last forever."

"To get out of here costs money. No job, no money. No money, no travel, no job."

"Ah yes, money, always a problem. Or maybe not."

The Englishman produced a wad of US dollars, all hundred bills, and counted them onto the bar.

"I am old-fashioned," he said. "I believe people should help each other. It makes life easier, more pleasant. Will you help me, Dusko?"

The barman was staring at the thousand dollars a few inches from his fingertips. He could not take his eyes off them. He dropped his voice to a whisper.

"What you want? What do you do here? You not reporter."

"Well, I am in a way. I ask questions. But I am a rich asker of questions. Do you want to be rich like me, Dusko?"

"What you want?" repeated the barman. He flicked a glance towards the other drinkers, who were staring at the pair of them.

"You've seen a hundred-dollar bill before. Last May. The fifteenth, wasn't it? A young soldier tried to settle the bar bill with it. Started one hell of a row. My friend Lasse was here. He told me. Explain to me exactly what happened and why."

"Not here. Not now," hissed the frightened Serb. One of the men from the tables was up and walking towards the bar. A wiping cloth flicked expertly down over the money. "Bar close at ten. You come back."

At half past ten, with the bar closed and locked, the two men sat in a booth in half-darkness and talked.

"They were not the Yugoslav Army, not soldiers," said the barman. "Paramilitary people. Bad people. They stay three days. Best rooms, best food, much drink. They leave but not pay."

"One of them tried to pay you."

"True. Only one. He was good kid. Different from others. I don't know what he was doing with them. He had education. The rest were gangsters. Gutter people."

"You didn't object to them not paying for three days' stay?"

"Object? Object? What I say? These animals have guns. They kill, even fellow Serbs. They all killers."

"So when the nice kid tried to pay you, who was the one who slapped him around?"

He could feel the Serb tense rigid in the gloom.

"No idea. He was boss man, group leader. But no name. They just call him Chief."

"All these para militaries have names, Dusko. Arkan and his Tigers. Frankie's Boys. They like to be famous. They boast of their names."

"Not this one. I swear."

The Tracker knew it was a lie. Whoever he was, the freelance killer inspired a sweat-clammy measure of fear among his fellow Serbs.

"But the nice kid ... he had a name?"

"I never heard it."

"We are talking about a lot of money here, Dusko. You never see him again, you never see me again, you have enough to start up in Sarajevo after the war. The kid's name."

"He paid the day he left. Like he was ashamed of the people he was with. He came back and paid by cheque."

"It bounced? Came back? You have it?"

"No, it was honoured. Yugoslav dinars. From Belgrade. Settlement in full."

"So, no cheque?"

"It will be in the Belgrade bank. Somewhere, but probably destroyed by now. But I wrote down his ID card number, in case it bounced."

"Where? Where did you write it?"

"On the back of an order pad. In ballpoint."

The Tracker traced it. The pad, for taking long and complicated drinks orders that could not be memorized, only had two sheets left. Another day and it would have been thrown away. In ballpoint on the cardboard back was a seven-figure number and two capital letters. Eight weeks old, still legible.

The Tracker donated a thousand of Mr. Edmond's dollars and left. The shortest way out of there was north into Croatia and a plane from Zagreb airport.

The old seven-province federal republic of Yugoslavia had been disintegrating in blood, chaos and cruelty for five years. In the north, Slovenia was the first to go, luckily without bloodshed. In the south, Macedonia had escaped into separate independence. But at the centre, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was trying to use every brutality in the book to cling on to Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro and his own native Serbia. He had lost Croatia but his appetite for power and war remained undiminished.

The Belgrade into which the Tracker had arrived in 1995 was still untouched. Its desolation would be provoked in the Kosovo war, yet to come.

His London office had advised there was one private detective agency in Belgrade, headed up by a former senior police officer whom they had used before. He had endowed his agency with the not too original name of Chandler and it was easy to find.

"I need," the Tracker told the investigator, Dragan Stojic, 'to trace a young guy for whom I have no name but only the number of his state ID card."

Stojic grunted.

"What did he do?"

"Nothing, so far as I know. He saw something. Maybe. Maybe not."

"That's it. A name?"

"Then I would like to talk to him. I have no car and no mastery of Serbo-Croat. He may speak English. Maybe not."

Stojic grunted again. It appeared to be his speciality. He had apparently read every Philip Marlowe novel and seen every movie. He was trying to be Robert Mitchum in The Big Sleep but at five feet four inches and bald, he was not quite there.

"My terms .. ." he began.

The Tracker eased another ten hundred-dollar bills across the desk. "I need your undivided attention," he murmured.

Stojic was entranced. The line could have come straight from Farewell, My Lovely.

"You got it," he said.

To give credit where credit is due, the dumpy ex-inspector did not waste time. Belching black smoke, his Yugo saloon, with the Tracker in the passenger seat, took them across town to the district of Konjarnik where the corner of Ljermontova Street is occupied by the police headquarters of Belgrade. It was, and remains, a big, ugly block in brown and yellow, like a huge angular hornet on its side.

"You better stay here," said Stojic. He was gone half an hour and must have shared some conviviality with an old colleague, for there was the plummy odour of slivovitz on his breath. But he had a slip of paper.

"That card belongs to Milan Rajak. Aged twenty-four. Listed as a law student. Father a lawyer, successful, upper middle-class family. Are you sure you've got the right man?"

"Unless he has a doppelganger, he and an ID card bearing his photograph were in Banja Luka two months ago."

"What the hell would he be doing there?"

"He was in uniform. In a bar."

Stojic thought back to the file he had been shown but not allowed to copy.

"He did his national military service. All young Yugoslavs have to do that. Aged eighteen through twenty-one."

"Combat soldier?"

"No. Signals Corps. Radio operator."

"Never saw combat. Might have wished he had. Might have joined a group going into Bosnia to fight for the Serbian cause. A deluded volunteer? Possible?"

Stojic shrugged.

"Possible. But these para militaries are scumbags. Gangsters all. What would this law student be doing with them?"

"Summer vacation?" said the Tracker.

"But which group? Shall we ask him?"

Stojic consulted his piece of paper.

"Address in Senjak, not half an hour away."

"Then let's go."