Deep Black (30 page)

Jerry tried his luck. ‘Speak English?’

He looked almost offended. ‘Of course!’

‘I’m looking for Ramzi Salkic. We were told he prays here. Do you know where we can find him?’

He didn’t even give it time for the name to sink in. ‘No, no. I’ve never heard that name. What does he look like?’

‘That’s the thing, we don’t really know.’

He opened his hands, palms upwards. ‘Then I am sorry.’

‘Never mind, thanks a lot.’

Dark clouds were scudding across the sky as we emerged from the mosque, and it had turned noticeably colder. ‘We’ve got thirty-five till Zuhr.’ I shoved my Baby-G under his nose. ‘Let’s get a brew. Pointless hanging around.’

We left the sanctuary of the courtyard and moved back into the hustle and bustle of the streets. A guy in a fluorescent vest was holding a fat hose over a blocked manhole while his truck sucked noisily. Paddy obviously hadn’t got round to sorting out the sewers yet. It probably wasn’t top of his list of priorities because, according to the waffle on its side, this shit-clearing vehicle was a gift from the German Red Cross. I wondered if they were being ironic.

72

There were cafés everywhere, and each one was a bigger lung-cancer factory than the last. Bosnians smoked like chimneys. Last time I’d been here the running gag was that if the Serbs didn’t finish you off, the Drinas certainly would. Health and safety probably worked in reverse here, like so much else. If they found out you had an extractor fan or a no-smoking policy, they’d probably shut you down.

We walked into one with lots of glass and chrome, cutting through a curtain of nicotine. We sat down and ordered a couple of cappuccinos. Apart from the smoke, we could have been in London or New York. The spectrum was the same, from teenagers sipping hot chocolate and obsessively checking for texts, to old boys on their own trying to make a small coffee last a lifetime.

The brew finally turned up just as Adhan, the call to prayer, sounded across the rooftops. Quite a few customers got up and headed for the till. We joined the queue, trying to get the hot liquid down us before we made the thirty-metre trek back to the mosque.

We walked through the wrought-iron gates, past men and women lining up in their separate, segregated areas. Little kids ran in and out of the legs of middle-aged men in business suits. Teenagers stood chatting to grannies.

Quite a few guys were already on mats in the drive-through outside, getting the prayers in early. Jerry and I mingled with the rest of the crowd, smiling at everyone as they waited in line at the washroom to perform Taharah, purification. You didn’t have to wash at the mosque: it could be done beforehand. Some just chatted as their kids ran riot. I’d decided we should split up to cover more ground.

Most of the people I asked about Salkic responded with a little English and a big smile, but they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – help me. Jerry worked another section of the crowd about fifteen metres away. He looked like a bad impression of Inspector Clouseau, and so did I, probably. I caught his eye and shook my head. He did the same.

The Qurŕān vendor was standing outside his premises, watching the crowd hopefully. Maybe he was anticipating a big run on his religious merchandise today. Then I looked at him more closely and realized he was actually studying faces. He was looking for someone.

I decided to up the ante. I stopped a young guy in a black-leather overcoat. When I asked him if he could help me, he replied in very good English.

‘I’m looking for a cleric, a man called Hasan Nuhanovic. Do you know what mosque he goes to? Is it this one?’

His smile faded and his eyes dropped to the floor as he shuffled past me. ‘No, I don’t know. I’m sorry. Excuse me.’

Jerry was near the washrooms now and I worked my way towards him, asking as I went. The next one I tried was a suited, briefcase-toting businessman who looked like he’d just come out of an insurance office. ‘I’m looking for a holy man, a Hasan Nuhanovic. Have you—?’ Before I’d even finished the sentence, he’d walked away without answering.

Jerry was immediately at my side, looking concerned. ‘What’re you doing, man?’

‘Rocking the boat.’

I spotted the shopkeeper talking urgently to a young guy with brown hair, and not about the weather. There was a lot of pointing into the crowd.

Jerry was still agitated. ‘Shouldn’t we stick to the plan? We’re here for Salkic first, right?’

I was already on my way towards the shop. The young man had a neat short back and sides and the kind of raincoat that wouldn’t have looked out of place in DC. I closed on him as he headed for the main entrance. ‘Ramzi Salkic?’

I knew it was him, the moment he tried to sidestep me and didn’t look up.

‘No, no, no. I’m not—’ His eyes never left the ground.

I found myself speaking to the top of his head. ‘I need to get a message to Hasan Nuhanovic. Can you do that for me? Have I got the right person?’

He pushed past me and I decided not to create any more of a scene by trying to stop him. Instead, I followed him to the shoe racks, where he slipped off his smart loafers.

‘Please leave me alone.’ He had to talk loudly to make himself heard over the murmurs of the faithful. ‘You have the wrong person.’

We were getting quite a few disapproving glances from the direction of the mats.

‘My mistake. I’m sorry.’

Their attention switched to me as I turned and moved back against the tide.

I headed for the shop. When he saw me coming, the owner scuttled inside and turned the lights off. ‘We are closed.’ He disappeared into the gloom without a backward glance.

For some reason I’d been expecting Salkic to be a lot older. It takes time to build trust with a principal; the middle man is normally someone they’ve grown up with, a contemporary with shared history and experience.

Jerry joined me. ‘What do you think? Is that him?’

‘For sure. He didn’t look confused, he didn’t look at me. He just wanted to get away.’

‘You fucked that up, then, didn’t you?’

But that was the least of our worries.

‘There’s two guys over there by the washrooms.’ Jerry kept eye-contact with me, as if I might take a look. ‘They didn’t look too pleased to see you. You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think one of them was at the Palestine.’

73

We walked out of the courtyard together, smiling and chatting as if we didn’t have a care in the world. ‘What’s he look like?’

‘Remember the pool fight? With that Lats guy? The one with the goatee, I think it’s him.’

We exited the gates near the two shrines, turned right, out of their line of sight, carried on down the road, then took another right to get us behind the mosque. The narrow road was lined with bars and cafés.

We sat down outside a
cevapcici
shop, on a long wooden bench under an awning. The doors were open and we were hit by a blast of warm air from the grill, where an old boy was frying meat.

I got Jerry to sit facing the shop because I needed a better view of the road. All the cafés were pretty quiet. It wasn’t really time to eat yet.

Seconds later, the two flat tops rounded the corner. I looked at Jerry and smiled as if we were enjoying a joke. ‘Both of them were in Baghdad.’

They were in pretty much the same kit, too; the only additions were the black-leather bomber jackets. Goatee caught sight of us and they ducked into a bar more or less opposite.

‘Won’t be long before at least one of them comes to the window.’

‘Why the fuck were you going public about Nuhanovic, man?’ He managed to give me a big smile and a bollocking at the same time. ‘That’s what’s got us in the shit. What we going to do?’

‘Nothing, yet. Chances are it’s nothing to do with Nuhanovic; maybe they just recognized us. I’d be curious if I bumped into someone here I’d seen in Baghdad.’

Jerry leaned forward. ‘Me too.’

A waiter appeared with ears that stuck out far enough to have held ten pens instead of just the one, and we both ordered
cevapcici
. ‘Five or ten piece?’

I asked for ten and Jerry nodded. ‘You have any Zam Zam?’

The waiter looked puzzled.

‘Or Mecca? You got any Mecca Cola?’

He looked as if he thought Jerry was taking the piss.

‘OK, maybe Fanta?’

He nodded and walked away, shouting our order to the old guy who, going by the size of the jug handles each side of his head, must have been his dad.

Jerry was rather good at this acting-normal-while-really-doing-something-else routine. Maybe it was a photojournalist thing.

The Fanta arrived, complete with straws and glasses. Jerry picked his up and held it in front of him. ‘I just thought I’d liberate my taste – you know, “Don’t drink stupid, drink committed.” Those guys still in the bar?’

I nodded as I reached over and swivelled the can so he could read the manufacturer’s details. ‘See who makes it?’

‘Coca-Cola. Shit.’ He pulled back on the ring and poured it into his glass. ‘Oh, well, I tried.’

I took a map I’d picked up at Reception from my pocket, put it on the table and pretended to play the well-known tourist game, Where the Fuck Are We?

The
cevapcici
turned up, ten sausage-type things the size of my little finger, made of kebab meat. I ripped open the pitta bread and shoved them in with a king-size helping of chopped raw onion. ‘They’ve still got eyes on us.’

One bite took me straight back to the Hereford kebab shop with Rob, trying to impress women with our sophistication while our lips were covered with grease, and chilli sauce dripped on to our shirts. ‘OK, here’s the plan.’ I kept on chewing. ‘If Salkic is there during Asr, we hit him again.’

Twenty minutes and a couple of Fantas later, we were ready to roll. It was time to shop. Well, sort of: I wanted to see how the flat tops reacted. There was no point trying to lose them – there weren’t that many hotels in town. Someone, somewhere, would know where we were.

Jerry paid the bill, all of about four dollars, and we wandered back across a small square where old men played park chess with giant pieces on faded black and white paving slabs. Weeds sprouted through the gaps and some of the original pieces hadn’t survived. The missing ones were improvised with sculptures made from lumps of wood and plastic bottles.

Jerry and I weren’t the only ones who had stopped to watch. Maybe the flat tops’ surveillance drills were shit; maybe they wanted us to know that they were there. Either way, they never took their eyes off us.

Jerry was still switched on and avoided getting eye to eye with them. He walked and talked as if he was totally unaware.

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Jerry that the flat tops were on to us because of Nuhanovic. Like everyone else on the planet, they’d want him dead: a moral crusade would be bad for business – probably always had been, even during the war. I wondered if the girls at the cement factory had been held so they could be sold on, until Nuhanovic managed to get them released. Well, most of them. The bastards had still managed to keep hold of Zina and the other three or four.

A parade of small shops at the end of the square had a scary number of Sarajevo roses sprinkled across the pavement in front of them. A different pop or rap tune blared from each doorway and all sold either cellphones or hair-dryers. ‘About half an hour left till Asr. What do you reckon?’

He had the correct answer. ‘Coffee.’

We went back to the place we’d had to abandon our cappuccinos, and got a table. I couldn’t see the flat tops through the windows, but I was sure they’d be out there.

I took one of the paper napkins and borrowed a pen from the waiter as Jerry delivered a sit rep. ‘They’re outside, still together. Standing in a doorway.’ He turned back to me with a grin. ‘Don’t they know they should be watching our reflection in a big silver samovar? They obviously didn’t see
Spy Game
.’ He looked down at the napkin. ‘What are you writing?’

‘I want to make sure Salkic at least knows where to find us.’

74

Adhan sounded round the streets once more. A few people got up, but not as many as before. We lined up at the till with them and filtered out into the courtyard.

This time we didn’t mingle with the crowd, but leaned against the courtyard wall behind the washrooms. We watched everyone coming in, waiting to get a glimpse of Salkic. I wasn’t feeling hopeful. It was mainly an older crowd this time. The women grouped themselves together and moved under the portico. Several men were already praying at the drive-through.

This session had a sort of market-day feel about it. Everyone seemed to know each other. The Qurŕān seller appeared in his doorway and had an even bigger scout round than the last time.

Jerry scanned heads as people went into the male washroom. ‘Flat tops – they’re staying outside.’

I looked to my right. They weren’t in the courtyard, but out on the street, chatting and smoking.

Moments later, the man I’d pegged as Salkic entered the courtyard via the shrine gates. He seemed to be glancing warily around him as he walked.