The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (23 page)

“What was it like here?”

“There were raids by all sides, back and forth across the hills. In the last year of the war a group of Partisans or Chetniks, no one was sure which, attacked and burned a village near here. Tomislav and your father were with the first men to get there afterward. Every family had been murdered in their beds. Everyone wanted revenge. And that was when your father went north.”

“In the last year of the war?”

“Yes.”

Vlado was puzzled. The file had clearly said his father went north two years earlier, at the same time as Matek. He attributed the discrepancy to the haze of his old aunt's memory, knowing how these things could get jumbled over time.

“But Tomislav stayed?”

“His father wouldn't let him go. Our father felt the same way. But Josip went anyway. He was determined.”

Thus was a war criminal born, Vlado thought. Seeking vengeance and finding it, but a vengeance of the most terrible sort.

“And he ended up at Jasenovac.”

“Is that what you've heard?”

“Yes. Right there along with Rudec.”

She was silent a moment, playing with her napkin. “I'd always heard that about Rudec,” she said. “But I was never sure about your father.”

“Is that what he and Uncle Tomislav were arguing about that night?”

“Who can say? Your mother and I couldn't stand the noise, so we left them alone out there in the back. Then we heard things getting worse, but by the time I got downstairs they were on top of each other.”

“So you never really found out what set them off?”

She paused, as if reluctant to continue. “Something about Rudec, if you really want to know.” She stared at the floor. Pine must have sensed the change in her tone, because he was suddenly more attentive, leaning forward in his chair.

“What was it?”

“Oh, Vlado, you really don't want to know all this. The past is the past. Let it stay in the ground.”

“Someone else has already dug it up, I'm afraid.”

She sighed, then placed her coffee cup on the table and straightened in her chair. “Tomislav told me about it the next day, after you had all gone. Even then he couldn't quite remember why things had gotten so out of hand, once he started explaining it. But Rudec's name had come up. Tomislav had heard some things after the war. About that place you mentioned.”

“Jasenovac.”

“Yes. Rudec and a few others had apparently been some of the worst. All the wild stories about the killings, the torture. I'd always wondered if maybe it was just Tito's people making it up. But the Seratlic family, the ones who'd helped Tomislav, they'd heard it from cousins who'd survived the place. They said all of it was true.

“But your father told Tomislav to stop repeating those things, especially the ones about Rudec. He said it was too dangerous. And Tomislav thought your father was being a coward. But your father insisted, and said Tomislav should never repeat those names to anyone. Not his, and not Rudec's. So Tomislav lost his patience. And, well, you saw the rest out your window.” She paused again. “But the oddest part was what your father did the next morning.”

“Leaving early the way we did?”

“Before that. Before you were even up. Tomislav was still asleep, snoring. Your mother was packing. I was already in the kitchen, still restless from seeing them the night before, my husband and my brother rolling on the ground like a couple of animals. So I was making bread when your father came down. He told me he was sorry things had gone so badly. But that he really was worried about what would happen if we talked about Rudec, or whatever he was called now, because he had some sort of new name, too. Your father said it would hurt him more than Rudec, because of things that had happened after the war.”

“
After
the war?”

“Yes. In Italy.”

“But not during the war.”

“No. Your father wouldn't talk about those years. Not a word. Especially about the time after he went north.”

“To that place.”

“Yes. To that place.” She lowered her head.

“They were in Rome fifteen years,” Vlado said. “I guess a lot could have happened. He could have been talking about anything. Work that they did against Tito, maybe.”

She shook her head. “Not in Rome. Later. When they were on the coast. In some other town. It's where he and Rudec were for years, your father said.”

There had been nothing in either file about that.

“I didn't know they lived anywhere but Rome,” Vlado said.

“They only stayed in the city a year or two, he said. Then they went south. Looking for work, I guess, or maybe because it was cheaper. He didn't say much beyond that. But he did say he hadn't wanted to leave. He said he was happy with his new life, with you and your mother. But—and I'm trying to remember exactly how he said it, because it was so strange . . . it was something like ‘I love my new life, but I never really finished my old one.' Then he gave me something, and I understood at least part of what he meant. But not for sure, because he never said anything more. He just gave it to me and told me to never throw it away, but to never let you or your mother see it. I think he couldn't bear to destroy it but was afraid to keep it anywhere that one of you might find it.”

“What is it? Do you still have it?”

“Yes. And maybe I should have kept his wish and not told you about it. But if it will help you find Rudec . . .” She shrugged. “Because he is part of it, too.”

“Show me, then. Please.”

She nodded, placing her palms on the table and slowly pushing herself to her feet. In passing she laid a hand lightly on Vlado's head, in the manner of a priest offering a blessing. “It's in my dresser drawer, where it has been since that night. I never even showed it to Tomislav.” Then she hobbled off, stiff after their hour at the table, seeming years older than when they'd arrived.

“What's happening?” Pine whispered. “Where's she going?”

“She's getting something my father left here, years ago. When I was a boy.”

Pine said nothing. There was only the sound of chickens outside the window, clucking and scratching, heads bobbing in the sunlight. Aunt Melania returned with a small square of paper. When she turned it over, Vlado saw it was an old photograph. She handed it to him. The tones had browned but the focus was sharp.

It was his father, smiling broadly, a young healthy man standing with his arm around the shoulder of a smiling woman whom Vlado had never seen. They stood by a ladder, which was propped against a lemon tree. Gauzy netting was stretched across the tree-tops, filtering the sunlight. Next to them was another couple, and it took only a few seconds for Vlado to recognize the features of Pero Rudec, or Matek, as they knew him now. His aunt was right. Matek had been handsome, with just enough of the rogue in his expression to seem mysterious. The foursome was in a small grassy clearing, surrounded by citrus trees. On one side of the grass was a ring of white stones, darkened in the middle, as if someone had made a campfire.

The woman with his father was thin and dark-haired. They seemed quite comfortable with each other, whereas Rudec's companion seemed stiff, ill at ease, or perhaps that was Vlado's imagination.

“Do you know her name?” Vlado asked.

“No. He never said a word of explanation. He only asked me to keep it.”

“May I have it?”

“Please,” she said. “And take this one, too. He sent it later.”

It was a picture of his father and him standing by a wooded mountain overlook. Vlado recognized the view, a few miles outside Sarajevo with Mount Jahorina in the background. Vlado looked about six, in shorts with knobby knees and blocky shoes. His father stood behind him. Both were smiling broadly, the same look of ease that his father wore in the picture from Italy, only in this one you couldn't help but notice the man's large, strong hands placed protectively on the boy's shoulders. Were they the hands of a killer? Vlado felt his eyes brimming, so he took a deep breath and looked again at the other photo, turning it over to search for an inscription. There was only a stamp from a studio where it must have been printed: FOTOGRAFIA MARTELLI. CASTELLAMMARE DI STABIA. 1958. He'd never heard of the place. Perhaps it was the town on the coast his aunt had mentioned.

“Just pictures?” Pine asked from behind. He sounded disappointed.

“Maybe we'll learn more in Rome,” Vlado said. “And this other place.” He turned the photo over again, saying the name slowly. “Castellammare di Stabia. Maybe we should go there, too.”

“Maybe,” Pine said, sounding skeptical.

Aunt Melania, who hadn't understood a word of their English, then spoke up. “Would you like a piece of advice from an old woman, Vlado? Something that will last longer than just a cup of coffee and a warm slice of bread?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling back. But he saw she was serious.

“Don't go there.” She pointed to the photo. “Leave those things where they belong.”

“I'm afraid it's too late for that now.”

She nodded, as if resigned to his answer. “If you have to, then. Maybe it will even be for the best.”

The look on her face said she didn't believe a word of it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Robert Fordham gazed down at the streets of Rome from his balcony on the fourth floor, wondering what he'd gotten himself into. On a warm November Saturday like this it was easy to forget the weary dishevelment that had reigned a half century earlier. Today the view was of nothing but prosperity—stylish hordes out for fresh air in sleeveless majesty. Older women squeezed vegetables in the market; the younger ones window-shopped. Close your eyes and the exotic orchestra of the streets kicked in—buzzing Vespas and honking cabs, a tinny choir of cell phones.

Yet, within the hour, and by his own free will, he would be conjuring up the grim postwar mood of 1946. For a pair of strangers, no less—an American and a Bosnian, the same sort of tandem that had once done him so much harm.

He sighed at his foolishness. Ever since he'd given his consent the previous morning his cautious nature had been on overdrive. Already wary of phones, of repairmen, of any visitor other than his housekeeper, Maria, he was now seeing threats in every strange face. Before taking his regular walk that morning he'd found himself reverting to the small tricks of a very old trade, leaving behind markers and telltales to determine if anyone had entered his apartment—or tried to—while he was out. He'd stopped at every corner to look over his shoulder, guarding his flanks. He'd scanned every parked or passing car, looking for an excessive number of antennae, and he'd been more relieved than he cared to admit to find his front door undisturbed on returning.

Stir up enough memories from a brief and intense time in your past, he supposed, and the old habits and fears returned with them. But part of him believed that it was only prudent to feel this way. There were still too many unforgiving people out there, with memories as long and clear as his, and Rome was his last refuge. He had long since given up the stern clapboard villages of New England for the eternal mess and glory of this ancient sprawl along the Tiber, having made it his solemn duty to live and eat well, while worrying as little as possible about the past.

Why, then, had Fordham agreed to venture back to that era when the city had been exhausted, creaking along on pushcarts and horse-drawn cabs in a medieval gloom of hunger and want? The lure certainly hadn't been the woman who had telephoned to make the request. Janet something or other, supposedly with the war crimes tribunal. She'd been friendly enough, and her bona fides checked out. But something in her manner had carried the unmistakable whiff of the Agency, or some similar organization.

The tribunal was only the latest outfit seeking to tap his memory. Earlier supplicants had been nameless men in suits, still trying to tidy up after so much sloppiness. They'd knocked at his door, said little, then left with curt nods when he politely declined. A later one had posed as a journalist—a clever effort, but no, thank you. Another had approached him at a café, unannounced, with the bluster and bonhomie of a long-forgotten acquaintance. “Just happened to be on vacation, old boy, so imagine bumping into you here. Let's talk about old times, shall we?” No sale for that one, either. Fordham had learned the value and safety of silence as well as anyone. After all these years, why give them reason to move against you?

He would have said no this time, too, until he'd heard the name that finally flushed him: Petric.

Could there possibly be a connection? And in such an unlikely quarter as the war crimes tribunal? He hadn't spoken their language in years, and for all he knew there were thousands of Bosnians named Petric. But he doubted it, and for the briefest of moments as he scanned the sidewalks below he saw not the shoppers with their strollers and motorbikes but wispy visions of that other time: thin, grimy boys in dark shorts siphoning gasoline from his motor-pool jeep, hunched old men peddling rerolled cigarettes at the curb, and, yes, the raven-haired prostitutes in all their rumpled glory, offering a half hour of tenderness for a pittance of lire or U.S. Army scrip. For a little extra they would even accompany you afterward on a stroll, arm in arm through the Borghese, where giggling boys by the duck pond climbed trees to toss pebbles at the GIs and their dates.

The shadow that inevitably fell on such memories was a hunched Balkan figure disappearing around a corner, a sharpened, underfed face with dark eyes, a face that could read your deepest ambitions and play them to the greatest possible advantage.

“Signor,” a woman's voice said, returning Fordham to the here and now. It was his housekeeper, Maria. “Your guests have arrived.”

He turned from the sunlight and stepped indoors, where the plaster walls always seemed to retain their midwinter chill. “Yes,” he said with resignation. “Buzz them up.”

A maid met Vlado and Pine at the door when they reached the fourth floor. Signor Fordham had only recently completed his nap, she informed them gravely, although the man who emerged around the corner looked far from groggy or ill prepared. He regarded them warily, his gaze lingering a shade too long on Vlado. Then he advanced in a courtly stroll, hand outstretched but quavering slightly, as if shaken by what he'd just seen. China blue eyes shimmered. A full head of white hair swept back neatly from a high forehead. He was tall, about Pine's height, and in spite of a slight stoop there was something military in his bearing. Considering the occasion, he was dressed almost formally, in wool slacks and blue blazer with a starched white shirt.

“Welcome to Rome, gentlemen. I'd hoped the subject of Pero Matek would never come up again in my presence, but I'm hardly surprised it has. Too nice a day to stay indoors, so I thought we'd go out on the terrace. Coffee?”

“Please,” both men answered, and he nodded to Maria.

“One little matter first, if you don't mind. If you brought any identification from the tribunal, I'd like to see it.”

Vlado glanced at Pine as they pulled out their wallets, fishing ID cards from the small stacks of lire they'd picked up at the airport. Fordham gave the cards a long look, comparing their faces to the photos before handing everything back, offering no apology for his apparent mistrust.

They took seats on the balcony, a trifle uneasy after that display. From Vlado's quick inspection the apartment seemed a spartan place, with few signs of the chockablock décor that usually fills the homes of the old, especially the prosperous ones who've traveled widely. No collections of photos or relics or memorabilia. Only one or two paintings. The furniture might have been from an upscale hotel, it was so generic. The terrace offered the lushest display—a floor of painted tiles with an ironwork table and chairs, enclosed by tall, hovering plants in giant terra-cotta pots. It was like some nook in a forest. Vlado briefly sampled the view before sitting, glancing at a torrent of pedestrians and mopeds streaming downhill from the nearby Colosseum, which glowed in the amber of late afternoon.

“One more bit of housekeeping before we start,” Fordham said. “Were you followed on your way here?”

Pine seemed taken aback, glancing at Vlado for guidance. “We, uh, pretty much came straight from the hotel,” he finally said.

“And we'd pretty much gone straight from the airport to the hotel. I guess I wasn't really looking out for it. It's not exactly part of our training.”

“I suppose not,” Fordham said, sounding disappointed. Pushing himself to his feet, he stepped gingerly toward the edge of the terrace, leaning outward to allow a view without revealing himself to anyone below. “There's a man down there,” he said, returning to his seat. “Doorway across the street, reading a newspaper. Blue jacket, green tie. Showed up just before you arrived. He with you?” He looked first at Pine, then at Vlado.

Neither had any idea who he meant. Pine got up for a glance, but Fordham hastily motioned him back to his seat.

“No sense attracting further attention. Probably nothing. Just a feeling.”

“You know, it's
us
looking for
him,
” Pine said, trying to strike a note of levity. “Not the other way around.”

“It's not Pero Matek I'm worried about. It's the other ones.”

“The other ones?” Vlado said.

“The problem is that neither of you has any idea what you're dealing with. Just like I didn't.”

“That's why we're here,” Pine coaxed. “To find out.”

“But I may be doing us all a disservice by telling you. These things happened a long time ago, but in some quarters they haven't lost their currency, or their potency. Long half-life, this kind of information. Some of it should have been buried in lead and locked away.” Then he turned toward Vlado. “You should know that as well as anyone, I'd expect. Are you his son, or is the connection more distant? I'm referring to Enver Petric, of course. Né Josip Iskric.”

“My father,” Vlado said, feeling as if his one advantage in the interview had been stripped away. How had the man figured it out so easily? Surely not from the tribunal, he hoped. Maybe it was the sort of deductive leap possible only for the overly suspicious, even paranoid. Yet, for an irrational moment, Fordham seemed like some sort of spirit guide, an eccentric old mystic who could gaze through the foliage of his balcony into the mist of the past. The man's blue eyes shimmered. Powerful emotions were at play, but Vlado couldn't read them.

“I suspected you might be his son the moment I heard your name. When you walked in the door I was certain. Those eyes. The way you listen. That earnest quality.” That word again. Vlado winced. “It's the only reason I agreed to see you at all. Even then, that woman who called nearly put me off enough to refuse.”

“Janet Ecker?” Pine said. “What'd she say?”

“It's not what she said. It's the way she was. Like the man I just saw across the street. Again, nothing definite. Just a feeling. Schmoozed me just like they would. People from the Agency. The ones who've been coming round here for years, trying to get a rise out of me. I guess I was worried she might be from their world instead of yours.”

Vlado and Pine exchanged glances. The old man's precautions suddenly didn't seem so fussy, and certainly not laughable.

“It's not easy,” Fordham said. “Breaking cover like this. Maybe I'm still seeking expiation. Forgiveness of sins. Though God knows I'm not Catholic.”

“Expiation?” Vlado asked.

“That part comes later,” he said, still unreadable. “Patience.”

He stood, creeping again to the edge of the terrace, leaning the way he had before. Apparently satisfied but revealing nothing, he returned to his seat.

“What do you know about those days, anyway?” he asked Vlado. “Your father ever tell you much?”

“Nothing. I didn't even know he'd lived here until a few days ago.”

Fordham nodded, seemingly not surprised. “Then I suppose the only way to tell you this story correctly is to take you to the scene of the crime,” he said, Vlado wondering what the crime might be. “Besides, it's a fine Roman afternoon, and this weather won't last. Come on. I'll call us a cab.”

When they emerged onto the sidewalk there was no sign of the man with the newspaper and the green tie. The ride was a strange one. They changed cabs twice, with Fordham speaking only to the driver for the first two trips, waving off their questions as they rode north through the city at dusk—up past the ruins of the Forum, then along crowded streets past the shoppers and off-season tourists, squeezing past the top of the Spanish Steps before veering west toward the river. Not until they caught the third taxi, by the Tiber, did Fordham stop turning incessantly to look out the back. Settling at last into his seat, he spoke again.

“What do you know about the way things worked here in 1946?”

“Just what we've seen in the cables,” Pine said. “And those weren't rich in context.”

Fordham nodded. “The city itself wasn't so different,” he explained. “It was the people who were an unholy mess. Refugees from half of Europe, and nobody had a dime. But if you were on the run or had something to hide, it was a great place to be. The Italians were too busy purging one another to worry much about other nationalities. The politics would go left one week, right the next. Just like today, only now it's every month. So, the carabinieri pretty much left it up to us and the British to sort out the foreigners. Croatians and leftover Ustashi were my department. I was one of eight officerinvestigators with the 428th CIC detachment, Army counterintelligence. We had a little office at 69 Via Sicilia. British Intelligence was just upstairs, thinking they still ruled the waves. Then there were the leftovers from OSS, James Angleton and his people, technically still working for the army even if officially without portfolio. The CIA wasn't born yet. He was a strange one. Tall and skinny. Wore a big coat, big hat. One of our people went to see him once and found him crawling on the floor, checking for microphones. Which of course made us wonder if he'd bugged
us
. He was already more worried about Moscow than any leftover Nazis. Hated Tito. Saw any Ustasha types as potential allies.”

“There were a lot of Croatians here?” Vlado asked. “And Bosnians?”

“Thousands. Coming out of the DP camps or up through Austria. A lot of them wanted to get down to Argentina or over to America. Ante Pavelic himself ended up as Juan Perón's security adviser, you know. There should have been a song about him in
Evita
. We were supposed to be rounding them up, but somehow they kept slipping through the cracks, mostly with the help of an evacuation network run by some Croatian priests, over at the Confraternita di San Girolamo. That's where we're headed. San Girolamo. Father Krunoslav Draganovic ran the show there. He also happened to be head of the pope's Pontifical Relief Commission for Refugees, which tied him into all the DP camps. Sometimes they sent people back across the border—with our help—to plant bombs or generally raise hell. But mostly they shipped all their bad eggs to safety overseas. Gave them new names and put them on freighters to Argentina, America, Canada, you name it. Everybody called Draganovic's network the ratline. It's how Klaus Barbie got away.”