The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (34 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a great deal to a great many for helping me complete this book.

Thanks to Tom Hundley, valued colleague and friend, for the germ of an idea that evolved into an important subplot, as well as for his hospitality to my family during our stay in Rome. Thanks as well to William Gowen, for sharing hours of vivid memories of his days as a U.S. Army counterintelligence officer in postwar Italy.

Greatly assisting my historical research were Ron Neitzke, former historian for the U.S. Department of State, and distinguished Croatian historian Jere Jareb, who directed me to a wealth of old memos, reports, and diplomatic cables on the subjects of looted Croatian gold and the escape of dictator Ante Pavelic, not to mention Dr. Jareb's harrowing personal memories of Croatia during the final days of World War II. Thanks also to authors John Loftus and Mark Aarons, whose book
Unholy Trinity
offered valuable perspective on the postwar ratline of Father Draganovic.

In preparing to write, and also during my work in Europe as a journalist, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting in The Hague at various times with more than a dozen prosecutors and investigators for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps nowhere on earth will you find a more tireless, selfless, and idealistic bunch. All accurate characterization of tribunal operations should be credited to their contributions, and the brief paragraph from a tribunal indictment glimpsed by Vlado Petric in the fourth chapter is excerpted from the “Jelisic and Cesic” indictment of July 1995. Any discrepancies or false notes concerning the tribunal—this is a work of fiction, after all— are my responsibility alone.

In Berlin, thanks to friend and journalist Anja Kolaschnik, for help in meeting Bosnian refugees in the city, and to Amir Kahvedzic and Boslijka Schedlich, for sharing their experiences and observations on the refugee life. In Sarajevo, Lejla Gotovusa, Emir Salihovic, and others offered valuable insights on the city's postwar state of mind.

For guiding me beyond the choppy seas of the first draft, profuse thanks to my agent and first line of defense, Jane Chelius; to brilliant colleague and friend Scott Shane; and to Soho Press editor Juris Jurjevics, who owed me nothing but helped anyway. Many thanks also to editors Jenny Minton in New York and Selina Walker in London, for deftly lighting the way to completion.

As always, I reserve my greatest thanks for my wife, Liz Bowie, for love, encouragement, and support.

Epilogue

Berlin wore gray for Vlado's homecoming. But for once he didn't mind as his plane descended through successive veils of cloud. Even the maddening flatness didn't seem to register as the jet circled low, searching the dimness of a winter afternoon for the landing strip at Tegel.

The authorities, by previous agreement, weren't waiting for him. So far the Berlin police had bent over backward not to seem jack-booted or Prussian. The lieutenant who'd telephoned Vlado in Italy had chatted with the bland, reasonable manner of a TV host arranging a panel on the euro as they'd discussed the likelihood of whether Vlado would remain a free man.

“It helps immensely that you came forward,” the officer said in crisp English. “Given that you didn't actually participate in the homicide, and given as well the circumstances of the victim's past, most factors weigh in your favor. Though we'll of course have to verify your account with the two primary suspects.”

No problems there. Haris and Huso had been only too happy to turn themselves over to international authorities in Sarajevo once the word went out, having spent the preceding days dodging undesirables from the Belgrade underworld.

Pine had done his part. He knew a German on the tribunal who was a friend of a friend of the chief inspector for homicide. Two phone calls later, everyone felt better, rebalancing a scale that might otherwise have tipped unfairly against an uprooted Bosnian.

So it was that Vlado received the welcome that he had missed five years earlier. Properly alerted this time, Jasmina unearthed a dress she hadn't worn since just before the war, to a wedding in '91. Sonja wore her one and only party dress, already a size too small, but that only made it more affecting for Vlado, who took it as a sign his little girl was growing up too fast.

They were waiting just outside the security entrance at his gate, and he emerged into a joyous implosion of Balkan shouts and grasping arms. They exchanged the usual phrases that can never stretch large enough to enfold such moments.

“It's so good to have you back.”

“Good to be back.”

“Did you catch them all, Daddy?”

“Yes, Sonja. I'm all finished with that now.”

Then they drove home in a borrowed car—an Opel, not a Yugo—Sonja chattering as if someone had been winding her spring all morning. Were there really windmills in Holland? Had he eaten much spaghetti? Was there still an emperor with rows of centurions? She squealed with delight when Vlado gave her a small box of Vesuvian stones, which he'd discovered at an airport gift shop in the nick of time.

They burst into their apartment on a wave of cooking smells and the fragrance of cut flowers. The memory of his dreary arrival five years earlier vanished in the steam of roast lamb and warm dumplings, and as they ate their way through the celebratory feast the wine blossomed like a benediction in Vlado's weary head.

Yet, when it came time to tell the stories—the ones he knew he must tell of his father, of Lia, of old wars and old sorrows that inevitably gave way to new ones—he felt strangely claustrophobic. It all seemed lodged in his throat like some bite too immense to swallow. And for a moment he felt the crush of those earlier years—alone in a siege with too much to think about and no one to tell it to, his trapped words going stagnant.

Jasmina, seeming to read his thoughts, rose quickly from her chair. For a bizarre moment he thought she was going to slap him sharply on the back, as if he were choking. Instead she darted to a side table, an eagerness in her eyes.

“I meant to tell you,” she said brightly, reaching for something. “This came for you this morning.”

It was a small white envelope, stuffed plump as a great ravioli, the right side plastered with Italian stamps postmarked in Castellammare di Stabia. The handwriting was small and careful. He gently tore it open to find a short note:

Dear Vlado,

There is much more for us to know about each other, and many
memories to share about the man we both loved. Bring your wife
and your daughter. My home was his, and now it is yours.

Love,
Lea

She'd spelled her name the Slovenian way, he noticed, and she'd enclosed a stack of seven black-and-white snapshots. New prints from old negatives, it seemed, made just for them. They were shots of his father, young and smiling, some with Lea, some with others; but none, he saw with relief, with Matek.

Then, proudly, as if he'd just drawn a winning hand at poker, Vlado fanned the photos before him on the tablecloth. Eyes shining, he looked to Jasmina, then Sonja, both cocking their heads as if they had a thousand new questions.

“Sonja,” he said. “Did you know that you had a . . .” What should he call her? “A stepgrandmother in Italy. On the seashore. She's been a secret, all these years, but someday we might visit her, all of us.”

His audience was hooked, and Vlado was certain that now it would all come easily, even the darker chapters to be told later, on this thrilling night when he had at last come home.

Dan Fesperman

The Small Boat of Great Sorrows

Dan Fesperman is a journalist for
The Baltimore Sun
and served in its Berlin bureau, covering Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia during their civil conflicts. He won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for
Lie in the Dark
. His latest novel,
The Warlord's Son
is available from Alfred A. Knopf. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and now lives with his family in Baltimore, Maryland.

ALSO BY DAN FESPERMAN

Lie in the Dark
The Warlord's Son

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2004

Copyright © 2003 by Dan Fesperman

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and
colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Fesperman, Dan.
The small boat of great sorrows: a novel / Dan Fesperman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Private investigators—Bosnia and Hercegovina—Sarajevo—Fiction.
2. Sarajevo (Bosnia and Hercegovina)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS 3556.E778 S5 2003
813'.54—dc21
2002040775

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eISBN: 978-0-307-42935-3

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