The Wolf of Sarajevo (14 page)

“How would you tell?” she asked.

“I'm not much of a car guy.”

“No,” Sarah agreed. “Not really a clothes guy either.”

Eric was wearing jeans and a light-blue oxford shirt with perhaps a little too much mileage on it.

“Harsh.”

“Just saying that you look more like a start-up maven in San Francisco than a diplomat.”

“It's because I'm Asian, isn't it?”

Sarah laughed at his mock indignation.

“You'll see,” Eric said. “I'll be the best-dressed guy at the ball. Trust me, this will not be a black-tie event.”

“Let's go see.”

The SDP rally was at the town's central square in front of the city assembly building, a beaux arts behemoth that dated back to the days of Austro-Hungarian suzerainty. There were maybe five hundred people milling around the square waiting for the speeches. A local band was playing traditional folk music, not the ear-splitting version known colloquially as turbofolk, but the older, more melodic songs of love, loss, and suffering that were like windows to the Balkan soul.

“Take a look around,” Eric said. “What do you see?”

“A political rally like a million others,” Sarah replied. “Smaller than most.”

“Look again,” Eric insisted. “Look at the flags they're carrying. EU flags. Bosnian flags. There are even a few old Yugoslav flags with the big red star. No RS flags. No Serbian flags. It's an antinationalist crowd nostalgic for the days of brotherhood and unity. And there's a mix. Young people. Old people. There are pensioners who look like they don't have two marks to rub together and a guy right over there with Italian sunglasses that must have cost two hundred euros. It's a movement.”

“That's a pretty big word for five hundred people.”

“Wait. You'll see.”

They joined the crowd, working their way up toward the front. After another couple of songs—which Eric delighted in pointing out were a mix of Serbian, Bosnian, and Croat standards—Nikola came onto the stage.

He was dressed in black jeans, work boots, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was slicked back, and he had what looked like a three days' growth of beard. The crowd cheered loudly and stamped their feet on the cobblestones.

“Not your typical pol,” Sarah observed.

“No. He is not.”

“And good-looking.”

Eric rolled his eyes.

“You can do better,” he assured her. “Hell, you just did better.”

Sarah stuck an elbow in his rib cage.

Nikola soaked up the applause, spreading his arms and tilting his head backward as though the heavens had just delivered a cooling rain to break a long drought.

“He looks like Jesus,” Sarah suggested.

“What do you know about Jesus?”

“I've seen pictures.”

“My fellow Bosnians,” Nikola began, and the crowd roared.

“Bosnians?” Sarah asked

“Not Bosniak,” Eric answered. “Bosnian. Bosniaks are members of the ethnic group who used to be called Muslims before and during the war. Changing that to Bosniak was part of the growing nationalist consciousness on the part of all three communities. Bosnian just means a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina irrespective of their ethnic identities.”

“Seems like a minor distinction.”

“Not to them. People here have killed and died for much, much less.”

“We are here today,” Nikola continued, “to send a message to
Banja Luka. That we didn't vote for what they've become. That we didn't choose what they represent. That we—the people of Republika Srpksa—have chosen peace and reconciliation and a European future for our children. That we do not believe them when they tell us to fear our brothers. That we will not listen when they command us to hate our neighbors. That if they cannot deliver on the promises they made and the future we have chosen then we will goddamn deliver it for ourselves.”

The crowd roared its approval. Eric cheered along with them, abandoning any pretense of diplomatic impartiality. Dimitrović and Petrović were not equal. What they represented was not worthy of the kind of false equivalence that too often paralyzed diplomacy, making it impossible to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil.

“Good-looking and talented,” Sarah said. Her Serbo-Croatian was rusty, but she could follow along easily enough even after twenty years. “You know, I think my organization might have some people who could help him. He'll need access to capital, expertise, pollsters. I could deliver that.”

“It'd ruin him if he was ever linked to the Agency,” Eric protested.

“We know that. We're patriots, not idiots. We could keep it quiet. Petrović would get money and expert help, and no one would ever need to know.”

“If his circumstances changed like that, everyone would assume it was you, in the same way that they assumed it was you behind the suspiciously well-heeled group of students who brought down MiloÅ¡ević in Belgrade.”

“I wish we had the stones and the skills to do half the stuff we get the credit or the blame for.”

“Still and all, what Nikola's doing has to be natural. It has to be organic and Bosnian. If it's seen as something alien or foreign, it'll trigger the political equivalent of an immune system response.”

“Well, what can you do, then, to help the good guys?”

“There are things,” Eric said cryptically. “I'm doing some of them.”

Nikola was just getting warmed up. He attacked Dimitrović, lambasting him as a cheat who had promised the voters a European future and delivered instead a Byzantine past.

“And Dimitrovic is not alone in this,” Nikola insisted. “He has allied himself to the mysterious Marko ‘Mali' Barcelona, a man no one seems to have met but who has made himself into perhaps the most powerful man in Republika Srpska. I heard that Mali went fishing the other day and caught the magic goldfish. Being a kind-hearted fellow, he unhooked the fish and tossed it back into the lake. The fish turned to him, and said, ‘But wait. You forgot about the wish.' ‘Okay, fish,' Mali answered. ‘What do you want?'”

The crowd laughed, but the laughter was tinged with anger.

“There is a way forward,” Nikola said, as though sensing that the crowd was on the edge of becoming a mob and setting fire to the parliament building behind him. “Annika Sondergaard, the Viking warrior, has put forward a peace plan that would finally make us whole. It is not a perfect plan; no plan is perfect. But it is a step forward, a step in the direction that we have chosen. I will walk this path with Sondergaard, and I hope that you will all walk it with me.”

Eric scanned the crowd, hoping to gauge their reaction. This
was exactly what he had had in mind when he had pitched the idea to Nikola in Mostar. Now was the chance to see whether it would play in Peoria—or Prijedor.

Twenty feet to his left and closer to the stage he saw a large man in a long coat that seemed unnecessary on such a warm afternoon. Although Eric had proudly highlighted the crowd's diversity for Sarah, this man seemed out place. He did not belong here. Eric could see a dark tattoo creeping up the side of the man's neck, but he was too far away to see if it was one of the paramilitary symbols.

In what seemed to Eric like slow motion, the man swung his coat open and pulled a wicked-looking gun from a concealed holster. An Israeli Uzi, Eric realized, and a part of his brain was unreasonably proud that he had identified the weapon.

He pushed his way toward the assassin shouting “Gun!” at the top of his voice. It was too far. There was not enough time.

Even worse, Eric saw, the gunman was not alone. There was a second man about fifteen feet farther to his left. He had drawn a handgun and was leveling it at the stage.

“Nikola! Get down!” Eric doubted that he could be heard over the crowd.

Those standing closest to the gunmen were fleeing in every direction, all except four. Eric saw two men tackle the first shooter. They did not look like amateurs. One man went for the gun, grabbing both the weapon and the shooter's forearm, and forcing it down toward the ground. The second man had a pistol in his hand that he jammed into the base of the would-be assassin's skull. Even over the crowd noise, Eric could hear the instruction.

“Drop the gun, you piece of shit.”

Something similar was happening to the second gunman. He was already on his knees. A woman Eric would have taken for a middle-aged housewife was standing behind him strapping his wrists together with yellow flex cuffs. Her partner, a younger man dressed like a student, covered the second shooter with a snub-nosed pistol. It had all taken only seconds.

Nikola had not moved. He was standing on the stage straight and tall. Eric jumped up beside him. Nikola embraced him and kissed him roughly on the cheeks three times in the Serbian fashion.

“Oh, to be shot at and missed,” he said.

“They didn't get a chance to shoot,” Eric replied.

“That's not what the papers will say. There'll be a hail of bullets in the stories tomorrow. Those two just did me a huge favor.”

Eric looked out over the crowd. Only a few of Nikola's supporters seemed to have fled the shooting. Hundreds were still milling around the square. They were keeping a respectable distance from the subdued shooters, but the atmosphere was still more that of a rock concert than a crime scene.

“My friends,” Nikola said into the microphone. “We have clearly scared the powers that be. They know what we stand for and what we fight against. And we live to fight another day. Now, let us leave the authorities to do their work. We will meet again soon. Bring your friends, and your cousins and your lovers. And thank you for sharing this adventure with me today.”

The crowd cheered its enthusiasm. Few seemed inclined to go home.

The uniformed police had arrived and were arguing with Nikola's rescuers about custody of the shooters.

“Are those Dragan's people?” Eric asked.

“They are.” The answer came from behind Eric, and he turned to see a short man in aviator sunglasses and a brown leather jacket who looked more than a little like Telly Savalas. He was completely hairless, without eyebrows or even eyelashes, the consequence, Eric knew, of an autoimmune disease.

“Good to see you, Dragan,” Eric said. “I don't suppose it was luck that had your people within arm's reach of the shooters.”

“I don't believe in luck. We know those two. They're heavies for the Zemun clan who have moved over to the White Hand. We marked them the moment they stepped into the square.”

The police had evidently won the argument, because they bundled the shooters into their cars, ridiculously small Czech Å kodas done up in the standard blue-and-white livery of the RS police.

Sarah joined the group, and Eric made the introductions.

“Gentlemen, this is my colleague, Sarah Gold, on temporary assignment to the embassy's economic department. Sarah, this is Nikola Petrović of the SDP and Dragan Klicković of the BIA.”

“State security?” Sarah asked with a raised eyebrow. BIA was the acronym for Bezbednosno-informativna agencija, or Security Information Agency, an organization that was supposed to spy on Serbia's enemies but spent much of its time and energy spying on the political opponents of whoever happened to be in power.

“Formerly,” Dragan explained. “Now I'm a . . . what's the word . . . privateer?”

Eric swallowed a laugh. “That's the right word for sure,” he offered.

“I run a private security firm,” Dragan said to Sarah, ignoring Eric's jibe. “I have been contracted to provide security to Mr. Petrović here, and my employees, if I may say, have again demonstrated that this is a quality firm. Well worth the price.”

“Who hired you?” Sarah asked.

“Your friend Eric, of course,” Dragan answered.

Eric shrugged.

“It's not my money. It's Annika's. But it was well spent.”

Nikola clapped him on the shoulder. “Indeed. Thank you, my friend. You kept your word.”

Dragan pulled a silver flask from his hip pocket and unscrewed the cap. He passed it to Nikola, who took a deep swallow and then handed it to Eric. It was homemade plum brandy, the kind that should not be set next to an open flame. Sarah took a slug as well. Dragan raised the flask and offered a toast.

“To near things,” he suggested, before downing the rest of the flask.

“Do you know the story of Mujo catching the magic goldfish?” Nikola asked.

“How many of those jokes do you know?” Eric interjected.

“More than most. Now hush.”

Eric held up his hands in mock surrender.

“So Mujo catches the goldfish. The big one. The one that grants three wishes. And Mujo's first wish is that bread grows from the trees. Sure enough, the branches are soon heavy with beautiful golden-brown loaves of fresh bread. His second wish is for the river to run with brandy instead of water. The fish shakes its head and the river begins to flow with amber
rakija.
Now Mujo is stumped. ‘You have a third wish,' the fish says, ‘but you have to use it now. No saving it for later.' ‘Okay,' Mujo answers, ‘I guess I'll have just one more liter of
rakija
.'”

Sarah laughed harder than the joke merited and touched Nikola's arm. Eric felt a brief and irrational stab of jealousy. Was she
flirting with Nikola or manipulating him? With Sarah, it could sometimes be difficult to tell.

Dragan looked at her appraisingly.

“So I have heard from some friends of mine . . . mutual acquaintances, I believe . . . that you are interested in the activities of a certain faux Spaniard.”

“I may be,” Sarah acknowledged.

“One of these acquaintances is currently eating his meals through a straw.”

“Really? That must be just awful for him.”

“I hear that you may have had something to do with that. It's an unusual skill for an economic officer, no?”