The Rendition (2 page)

Although Mr. Nadaj seemed to have turned the tables very nicely, I did my best not to dwell on that fact.

It was a bumpy ride. We rode for what seemed like three hours, but when you're squashed into the pitch-black trunk of a vehicle with your knees only inches from your jaw and wondering how the hell you got into this mess, believe me, time drags. Particularly, when you're in the kind of rattletrap vehicles people drive in this part of the world, where probably four out of five cars on the road are either unregistered or stolen. For all I knew, we could have been underway for only forty-five minutes. After we stopped, I could hear people jabbering and moving around. Finally, someone pulled open the lid of the trunk and from out of the pitch darkness shone a flashlight into my eyes. Although my first impulse was to kick the two guys who reached in to grab my legs, I decided that discretion might be the better part of valor. As it turned out, I was wrong. They yanked me out of the trunk and over the bumper, then let me drop to the ground.

“For cryin' out—” I never finished the sentence.

“Shut up, asshole.” I still wasn't tracking too clearly, but it sounded like someone was familiar with the English vernacular. It also sounded like the voice of a woman.

Before I had a chance to look around, a bearded guy wearing a green jacket and brown work pants and with a white rag on his head, whose breath stank of garlic, dragged me to my feet and sent me stumbling into a pitch-dark shack. When I said “Keep your goddamned hands to yourself,” he responded by jamming his weapon into my back and shouting something in Albanian. I figured him for the individual who'd come up behind me and smashed my face with the butt of his weapon. Naturally, I also figured I owed him one, more than one. All right, so I'm vindictive.

After someone got the room's one lightbulb turned on, he motioned to me to remove my field jacket. First, he patted me down, looking for a weapon. Then he went through the jacket pockets. I watched silently as he carefully placed what he found onto the room's one table. There wasn't much: besides the KA-BAR, I had a couple of hundred euros, a handkerchief, a Leatherman, a bottle of liquid soap, a pocket comb, my passport. He told me to remove my G-Shock wristwatch, which he tossed to the guy who seemed to be in charge. That was Ramush Nadaj himself. I knew that because before we left we were given an array of his pictures, full-face and both profiles, which we'd committed to memory.

When you're running a rendition, you don't want to bring back the wrong guy. It has happened. More than once.

After he'd examined it, Nadaj tossed the watch on the floor and started pounding it with his rifle butt and then with the heel of his boot. I knew what he was doing—making sure the watch, in case it contained a transmitter, wouldn't be sending a signal to a satellite and giving away our location. With the watch in pieces, he held up a tiny component attached to a wire and flashed a triumphant smile. When he heaved it in my direction, I ducked, and then he barked something that seemed to mean I should put my hands on my head and sit down on the floor. I guess I didn't react quick enough to please his majesty because he immediately swung the barrel of his weapon at my head. Again I ducked, but when I tried to grab the gun, he was too fast for me. He swung it again, opening a gash on my left cheek, which immediately began to drip blood.

He smiled when he saw the blood, said something I couldn't understand, and swung his weapon in front of my nose. His smile was kind of goofy, reminding me of a couple of the individuals I encountered during a visit I once made to a facility for the criminally insane. Then he jammed the weapon against the side of my neck. I froze. As he held a brief conversation with the woman, I steeled myself, waiting for the inevitable. With the safety off, he didn't have to do anything more than squeeze the trigger.

Then I heard her say,
“Mos shti'ni.”
Don't shoot.

After half a minute, he relaxed the pressure on the gun—and I started breathing again.

It was my passport that interested them most, and they all gathered around to take a look. I wasn't surprised when the guy with the droopy mustache tossed away the soap since, in Kosovo, they haven't yet heard that cleanliness is next to godliness. The individual who'd clobbered me—the one with the white do-rag around his head and garlicky breath—sat down on a cot and began playing with the Leather-man, an all-purpose utility tool, as though he'd never seen one before, which he probably hadn't.

When I saw Nadaj jam the wad of euros into the pocket of his field uniform, I had no doubt who was the boss here.

As they spoke, I looked around. The building wasn't much more than a small shack, sparsely furnished with a couple of cots, a wooden chest, a table, and some rickety chairs. It had two small windows, one of which had a broken pane, a flat ceiling, and a wooden floor. I could hear a humming sound from the generator supplying current for the single lightbulb.

After removing her fatigue cap, the woman turned her attention to me. With the cap off, her dark hair hung to her shoulders. She had very blue eyes, a thin straight nose, and a long pale face. Like Nadaj, she was dressed in black “cammies”—camouflage fatigues—which fit so loosely it was hard to tell what kind of figure she had. In other circumstances, I might have thought of her as mildly attractive.

With my passport in her hand, she said, “All right, Alex Klear, tell
us why you're here. Who sent you?” Her English was accented but fluent. “Are you with KFOR?” KFOR is the designation for the NATO stabilization force occupying Kosovo, the army with the thankless mission of keeping Serbs and Albanians from one another's throats—peacekeepers, so-called.

I gave her the standard jive. “I'd like to speak with someone from the American Embassy.”

“Tell us what we want to know. Then you can speak with your embassy.”

“I'd like to—”

“UNMIK? Are you with UNMIK?” UNMIK is the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which is headquartered in Pristina, the capital. UNMIK has the next-to-impossible task of trying to administrate the lawless province.

I said, “I can only give you my name, rank—”

“Cut the crap, asshole! I don't want this name, rank, and serial number bullshit.”

She looked at Nadaj, said something in Albanian, obviously letting him know I wasn't being cooperative enough. Nadaj pointed toward me, made an upward movement with his fist. When she turned back to me, she had a strange smile on her face. “You don't answer our questions, we can make you wish you did.” She stepped forward and aimed a kick with a muddy boot that struck against the inside of my thigh. “Next time I don't miss. And then I cut them off. You won't be able to get it up after that. It'll just hang there.” She sneered. “No matter who the bitch is, it'll just hang there. You fuckin' understand me?”

I did understand her—well enough to know I was in a very bad situation. I made an enormous mental effort not to think about just how bad it was.

“Do you understand me?”

“I understand, but I don't see why I can't speak with the American Embassy.”

Ignoring my comment, she said, “You can't be with UNMIK. They all wear blue uniforms and those stupid blue helmets. They're all cowards.
They let Muslim people die in Srebrenica.” She seemed to be working herself into a frenzy. “Thousands of people, men and boys, some just twelve years old, slaughtered like cattle. We'll never forget that!”

I knew what she was talking about. When I was in Bosnia, I'd gone to Srebrenica, an old mining city, where I helped keep the lid on a memorial celebration for slain Muslims that some of our people thought might get out of hand. Before that, the government had given me a tenday course in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, but that was a while ago, and I could only guess at what these people were saying. The last thing I could admit was that we were here on our own. There was a possibility, however slight, that they might think twice before killing a military member of KFOR. If they tumbled to the real situation, I figured I'd be dead before sunup.

“Are you with KFOR? Working for someone else? Answer!”

Definitely the excitable type. When I again mentioned the American Embassy, she spoke loudly to Nadaj, who shook his head.

Then the guy with the garlicky breath and the white do-rag on his head made a fist and shouted something at me. He seemed to have solved the Leatherman, and was acting as if he'd just invented the telephone or the internal combustion engine. If the Albanian language has the equivalent of “Eureka!” he was shouting it. He stood up from the cot, held up the Leatherman, then snapped out the knife blade and made a sawing motion. When the woman said something, they all started laughing.

Turning to me, she said, “Quemal is called by the people in his village
‘Vrasës.
' Do you know what that means?”

I frowned, recalling only that the word had something to do with killing.

When I shrugged, she said, “Killer or assassin.” She smiled. “Quemal is known as ‘The Assassin' because he killed the mayor of his village when the mayor insulted his sister.”

Before I could reply, Quemal started jabbering again. When the woman said something, they again laughed.

“Quemal says in the village when they cut off someone's balls, he then has to eat them. I told him, with you no problem. Americans will eat anything that has ketchup on it.”

“How would you know?” I said.

She smirked. “That's right, isn't it?”

“You speak good English.” I figured some flattery couldn't hurt. And for understandable reasons, I was doing my best to change the subject.

The three guys were staring at me intently, trying to pick up what we were saying. There was a rickety wooden table at the center of the room, and Nadaj sat down at it, leaned forward, and said something to the woman. “Ramush says the people of Kosovo are fighting for their independence. He says in this country people die for what they believe. Not like America, where all the people want is to wear jeans and listen to pop music. He says one more person in a grave in Kosovo won't matter to anyone.”

Although I assumed I was the “one more person” Ramush had in mind, I pushed that thought out of my mind. My left shoulder felt like it was dislocated. My mouth was full of blood. My head was pounding. I wondered what she'd say if I asked her for some Tylenol. Probably become even more hysterical.

“I'm asking again. Tell us who sent you.” When I didn't respond, she said, “You think Quemal isn't serious?” She shouted at the guy on the bed, who stood up, pounded his chest, and shouted “Quemal Vrasës.” Then he stepped forward, again snapped open the Leather-man, and began the sawing motion. I felt a wave of nausea, as though I might have to heave then and there.

Placing her hand on his shoulder, the woman pulled him back, then, turning back to me, she spoke quietly. “Listen, Alex Klear. You don't belong in the Balkans. Being an American won't help you here. Your only hope is you tell us who sent you here, and why.”

I could agree with her that I didn't belong in the Balkans, and I couldn't help questioning the series of events that had landed me in this situation. The irony was, I couldn't answer her question. I didn't
know who wanted Nadaj. Or why they wanted him. I was as curious about that as they were.

Still trying to change the subject, I asked how she'd learned English.

“You know where Bridgeport is? I lived there for three years, almost.” When she again smirked, I saw she was missing a couple of teeth, a fact that definitely made her less attractive, and another reminder of how far behind the rest of Europe this country is. “My name is Viktoria. In the States they called me Vickie.”

Ramush said something, and Vickie nodded. “How did you know where to find us?”

When I didn't answer, Vickie said, “You people aren't as smart as you think you are. We knew you were watching us.”

That at least explained how they were able to grab me. I wondered about Angel and Scott, my two partners in this undertaking. I felt a sinking sensation as I realized that if they were dead I was as good as dead too. Buck was our contact, but none of us knew where he was. At the CIA station in Skopje? At Camp Bondsteel? Quite possibly, he was still back in D.C. Even if Angel and Scott were alive, they wouldn't know where I was. And with the van so far away, they couldn't have followed us.

I watched warily as the four of them talked. Quemal stood up from the cot, crossed the room, pushed back the table, and pulled open a heavy trapdoor in the floor. From where I was sitting, I could see wooden steps leading down to a small crawl space.

Vickie told me to stand up. Then Nadaj motioned to me to put my hands back behind my head.

When I again didn't react fast enough to suit him, he aimed his fist at my gut. I was ready this time. I sidestepped and swung, catching him solidly on the side of the head, hitting him hard enough to stagger him. He looked surprised, then angry. He barked something at the other two guys, who came at me in a rush. I got in a couple of good shots before they got hold of me, each of them hanging on to an arm. With Nadaj pounding me, I doubled up. Then something came crashing
down hard on the back of my neck. When I was down on my knees, I got a kick in the face from Quemal, ‘The Assassin.'” A couple of them dragged me toward the open trapdoor.

Vickie's laughter was more like a cackle, and over the ringing in my ears I heard her voice. “That's where you're spending the rest of the night, Alex. The rats and spiders will be good company.”

I went down into the hole headfirst, tumbling down the wooden steps, my arms landing hard in a pile of junk, everything from broken glass to orange rinds and coffee grounds. When I tried moving my hands, I found myself with a fistful of human excrement. Someone dropped the door with a loud bang, a sound that made me think of a coffin lid being slammed shut. The earth beneath the house was damp and cold and stank as badly as anything I've ever smelled in my life. Someone had done a half-baked job of shoring up the dirt walls, which were crumbling and crumbled a little more every time I moved, and made me think that a too-sudden move might result in me burying myself alive. Except for a slant of light coming through a crack in the floor, it was pitch black. I felt pains shooting through my arms and back. There was hardly any room to move.