Zagreb Cowboy (34 page)

“Is there any way I can drive him back to Zagreb?”

“You’d need somebody with training, a doctor or nurse. He’s going to need morphine and a drip and constant vigilance that there’s no pressure building up in his skull.”

“Can you come, Irena?”

“No.”

“Do it for Gringo.”

“No.”

“If we stay here, we’re all fucked. You know that, don’t you? I’m not even thinking about having to spend time in jail here. How long do you think the
UDBA
would give us? Renegades, they’d call us.”

Irena nodded; she knew the truth of what Anzulović was saying. Della Torre had told her how the
UDBA
’s assassination squads hunted down dissidents and defectors. How they killed whole families. How they’d operated in Britain before.

“Messar’s not staying here,” Anzulović said. “Not alive. And if he’s going to die, he might as well die on the way back to Zagreb. If you don’t come, Messar will just have to take his chances. But he’s not staying here. Neither is Gringo. He’s been gone long enough. We’re going to need him back in Zagreb. Unless the Bosnians or Strumbić get to him first.”

Harry’s ears perked up every time she heard the name Gringo, though she didn’t understand anything else.

“Are you asking after Marko?”

“Yes,” said Irena testily, her worried expression mirroring Harry’s feelings.

“Is there a telephone I can use? Maybe he’s made it back to the apartment,” Harry said.

“Or maybe all those sirens are for him,” said Irena in a low, worried voice.

Harry had to phone three times before someone picked up.

“What?” It wasn’t della Torre.

“Mr. Strumbić? This is important. I’m a friend of Marko’s, Marko della Torre. I know that you want to kill him. If you have him with you, put him on the phone. Otherwise I will call the police and tell them who you are and what you’ve done. Do you understand? It’s important that you understand.”

“Yes, yes. He not dead. He here. Wait,” he said.

“Marko?”

“Who’s that?” he sounded groggy, thick-headed.

“It’s Harry, Marko. It’s Harry. Thank god you’re alive. Are you okay? Something sounds wrong.”

“What is it?” Irena hovered impatiently over Harry’s shoulder.

“It’s Marko. He’s alive, but there seems to be something wrong.”

“Who’s that you’re talking to?” della Torre asked.

“Irena. Your wife. I’m at the hospital with Messar.”

“Tell her my tennis-playing days are over.”

“He said something about not playing tennis anymore.”

“Tennis? He doesn’t play tennis.”

“Marko, what’s going on?”
Irena asked, taking the phone from Harry.

“Irena. Sorry about dinner. I was tied up. We’ll get divorced some other time.”

“Never mind. Tell me, what’s the matter?”

“Somebody tried to rearrange my elbow to look more like my asshole. And it hurts. I might need another one of your suppositories.”

“You were shot?”

“Yes. And clubbed. I’m a little hard of hearing.”

“Wait there. We’ll get you to hospital.”

“No hospital. I don’t want the police. It’s a hell of a mess up on the Heath.”

“No police. We’ll have a look at you without police. It’ll be as if you aren’t even here.”

“Will you have a look at Strumbić too? He’s looking a bit peaky as well.”

Irena turned to Harry.

“Can you do another ambulance run for us?”

Harry nodded.

By the time she and Anzulović had got della Torre and Strumbić down the hill, there were police everywhere on the roads and circulating around the hospital. Harry dropped them off at the emergency room entrance, and Anzulović took the other two to Irena.

Thankfully no one took an interest in three men who looked as if they knew where they were going. Strumbić had bandaged della Torre as gingerly as he could and put a torn bit of sheet around his own leg, which had been steadily leaking blood. They’d put on some fresh clothes, which helped. Anzulović wondered how long it would be before the police traced them to the apartment building.

Della Torre was lying on a blanket on the autopsy table. Irena had rigged a drip and had given him some morphine, and Strumbić was in a chair, also with a dose of painkiller, when the doctor came in.

He seemed familiar, though della Torre’s senses were crackling in all directions. He heard everything from down a long tunnel. Most of him felt not numb, but a couple of centimetres out of focus. Except for the pain in his arm, which he was conscious of, though it didn’t hurt. He knew the man. Tall, slightly stooped. Receding black hair. Roman nose, small glasses. Just couldn’t place him.

“Ah, Mr. della Torre. I see we can’t keep you out of hospital. You’ve made it a regular pilgrimage. Let’s take a look at that arm. I’m David Cohen, if you remember me.”

It came back to him, snapped into sudden focus. Irena’s new man.

“Can you follow my fingers with your eyes? Can you hear?”

“Yes, Dr. Cohen. How could I forget?”

“How’s the pain?”

“Better than kidney stones. Worse than being tied up.”

“Oh.”

“How are those boys of yours, the ones in south London?”

“They’ll live. At least until they get shot or stabbed again.”

“What about the one with the bullet in his brain?”

“He woke up this morning. If there’s brain damage, they haven’t found it yet. I suspect it’s a similar injury to that of your friend with the bullet in his head. In the boy’s case, the bullet bounced off his jawbone and up.” Cohen examined della Torre’s arm while he talked. “The bounce took some of the momentum off the bullet, so it didn’t penetrate the skull. Whereas with your friend in the other room, the bullet just went straight up. Which is very curious. I’d say it was a nine-millimetre shell, more or less the same as the one that hit the boys in south London, but either this one was shot from a very great distance or something took the momentum out of the bullet.”

“How is he doing?” asked della Torre.

“Well, he’s got a new hole in his head, and blowing his nose might be uncomfortable in the future. But the bullet, which cracked his skull, stopped short of his brain. Doesn’t mean he’s in the clear, but he’s not in critical danger,” Cohen said as he tidied della Torre’s elbow and applied stitches. “Nor are you, though you’re going to have to withdraw from Wimbledon this year if you’re left-handed.”

“Right-handed.”

“Oh, so you’ll be fine, then. I’ve done a bit of temporary patching, but you’re going to need surgery to put the bone together. That doesn’t need to happen straight away, but you can’t leave it too long. I’m afraid you’re going to have to modify your golf swing, though.”

“Doctor, we can’t go to the police.”

“So I understand. I don’t know if I can help you. I’m going to have to leave you people shortly — my pager’s been on overdrive. I’ve been told there are three men with bullet wounds coming in. I mean, other than you three. My colleagues are already dealing with one downstairs — he’s got a superficial but very painful graze of his penis. I’ll be very curious to know how that happened. The other two are more serious. Possibly life threatening.”

“They’re a couple of Bosnian criminals who like firing their guns. We got in the way. I think you may find they prove to be suspects in the shooting of your young men.”

“I see.”

“We are Yugoslav police. All of us here, except for Irena. We’ve been tracking them for a few months, but we’re not officially in this country. It would be very embarrassing for all concerned if we were connected with the shootings here. It would put everyone in a difficult position. Including Irena.”

Della Torre tried to think straight. Tried to guess how close this Dr. Cohen was to Irena. Tried to appeal to him by raising the threat to her as subtly as possible. Under normal circumstances he could do these things, relying on his smile and conspiratorial friendliness to get a witness on his side. He wasn’t sure how successful he’d be from a prone position on an autopsy table.

The doctor left the room to look at Messar again. Irena returned with Anzulović.

“Pilgrim.” Della Torre was muttering to himself, the morphine taking the edge off his pain and returning his thoughts to the source of his present difficulties.

“Has this near-death experience given you religion?” Irena asked.

“No. It’s a word that got me shot.”

“I thought that was the Bosnians.”

“Them too.”

“John Wayne,” said Anzulović.

“What?”

“It’s a famous line from one of John Wayne’s movies. ‘Pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning; might have got somebody killed; and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth.’”

“Thanks, Anzulović. That really makes my head ache less,” della Torre said.

Dr. Cohen wheeled Messar into the room. His head had been stabilized by a frame that sat on his shoulders and was bound to his forehead. Irena stitched the wound on Strumbić’s calf. Dr. Cohen waited for her to finish and then spoke generally to the room.

“I have three patients to see downstairs as a matter of urgency, which will prevent me from talking to the police for a couple of hours. But when I’ve finished, I will have to tell the police that earlier I saw some other suspected shooting victims in the autopsy room. When the time comes, I will tell the police all I know, though that isn’t very much. Two hours.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, David,” Irena said.

“I hope this doesn’t come back to bite us, Irena. Both of us. I fear it will. I don’t think I’d do this for anyone else.”

“I know,” she said, walking over to kiss him. Anzulović didn’t know where to look. Even Strumbić raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have to go with them,” she continued. “If it’s okay here, if the police don’t want me, I’ll be back. Soon.”

He gave a scant nod of the head. “I hope so. I really do. Maybe we can talk a little more then.”

“Yes,” she said. “I owe you that at least.”

Dr. Cohen left them. Irena went soon after to collect some of her belongings and whatever medicines and dressings she could assemble from the hospital for the trip. Strumbić sat, his trouser leg rolled up above the wound. Messar was silent and bandaged. Della Torre looked over at them through a fog, the pain in his arm dulled.

“Marko, how are you?” Harry knelt down beside him. He hadn’t seen her come into the room.

“A little better than kidney stones. Worse than being tied up. But a new kind of pain. The drugs help,” he said, less groggy than he’d expected to be.

Pieces of a story were assembling in Strumbić’s mind. When the estate agent had spoken to him on the phone, demanding to talk to Gringo, he’d known. He didn’t know how or whether Irena figured in the scam, but he knew he’d been set up by the estate agent. Obvious, really.

She was a dish, he thought to himself. It softened the blow slightly, being stitched up by a beautiful woman. He didn’t know why, because the money was still gone. Until he found some way of getting it back. But it was better than getting robbed by an ugly Bosnian.

“I think we need to go now,” Anzulović said.

“What is it?” They could hear the stress of the evening in Harry’s voice, her fear that the men were talking about something even worse.

“I’ve got to say goodbye for a little while,” della Torre said.

Irena took them through the hospital’s back corridors, where no one stopped them or even paid them any attention. They got down to the loading bay for the hospital’s plant and equipment.

“I’ve packed a few things: some morphine, some penicillin, a couple of bags of saline solution. Some dressings. But we need to be fast. We need to get Messar to a hospital as quickly as possible. No more than twenty-four hours. Maximum.”

“Everyone have their passports?”

It was a foolish question. Their passports, whether legitimate or fake, would have been stapled to them from the moment they’d left Yugoslav soil. East Europeans clung to their documents the way the British clung to their accents. Della Torre still had his Italian passport in his suit. He would have to leave his other things with Harry, including his precious American documents. He’d rely on the
UDBA
ID to get him back into the country.

Anzulović went with Harry back up the hill to fetch his car. The rest of them waited by the service entrance, listening to the screaming sirens tearing along the local roads and the helicopter overhead.

The Merc was a mid-sized saloon. They’d be cosy on the trip down. But the car was fast, and should be reliable now that the fanbelt had been replaced. If anything could get them to Zagreb in a day, it would. They assembled themselves in it, Messar and Strumbić in the back, Messar’s drip tied to the hanger strap overhead, Irena between them, and della Torre in the passenger seat, his injured arm strapped against him.

“When will you be back?” Harry asked.

“I don’t know.” He paused. “Listen, Harry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being honest with you. For not telling you. But some things . . .”

She brushed the corner of her eye with the back of her hand.

“Will you be okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will they do anything to you when you get there?”

“I don’t know. Just that my chances will be better with the help of the folks in this car. We all kind of need each other right now. The people the
UDBA
send out to fix problems like us are good at what they do.”

Tears ran down her face. She kissed him tenderly through the open window, and again Anzulović looked away, not really knowing what to think. Other than that he needed a cigarette. Many cigarettes. It was going to be a long drive. And he suspected he’d be doing most of it.

“
N
ICE OF YOU
to stop in, Gringo.”

“Least I could do.”

“How’s the arm?”

“So long as I don’t move it much and I eat painkillers like they’re sweets, I’m fine. How’s Messar?”

“He’ll live. They’ve got him bandaged up and on drugs, and no damage to the brain. For which we have to thank Irena and her friend. How is she?”

“She’s gone back to London. Picking up her car and my stuff. Mind if I sit?”

Anzulović waved his hand towards a chair. There were packing boxes stacked up in the corner of the room. And there were fewer people in the building. It had become a veritable
Mary Celeste
.

“So what’s happening?” della Torre asked.

“What’s happening about what?”

“Anything.”

The Croatian government had declared independence, as had the Slovenes. So far there was just a state of nervous tension in Zagreb. A few air-raid warnings had sounded. People had been puzzled by the noise at first but now knew to run to shelters. But those had just been drills.

It wasn’t so quiet in Slovenia, though. Yugoslav army tanks had driven into the new republic to retake crossings the Slovene police had captured from the federal border police. The little band of London’s wounded had only just crossed before the Slovenes took over.

It would have been a different story had they arrived at the border a day later. By then the Slovenes were shooting at army units who haphazardly returned fire, and nothing much was getting into or out of Slovenia across the Italian border.

The Yugoslav army conscripts didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want to shoot at what they saw as their own people. For the Slovenes, though, the Yugoslav army and state were now enemies. Croatia, meanwhile, just watched, biting its nails.

“Well, the
UDBA
in Croatia is officially disbanded. So we’re out of a job. But that’s okay, because we weren’t being paid anyway. We are, however, being absorbed into the Zagreb police. Which means we’ll finally be drawing a salary again.”

“Croatian intelligence?”

“Military intelligence, run by the police. God knows they could use a little. The Croatian secret service wouldn’t take us. They only wanted what they call real
UDBA
people, not fakers like us who just try to make sure everyone stays honest.” There was a hint of irritation in Anzulović’s voice.

“Military intelligence. Oxymoron.”

“With special emphasis on the
moron
. You know Colonel Kakav, yes? Well, he’s our new boss, unfortunately.”

“Probably not good news for me.”

“Probably not. He has a bee in his bonnet about Zagreb cops being shot by
UDBA
agents.”

“So what happens to me, then?”

“Nothing. Everyone’s too tied up with the small matter of civil war to be worried about you just now. Don’t worry about
it too much. Strumbić wrote an affidavit about how you didn’t shoot him, though he’s neglected to sign it so far. And once Messar is whole again, he’ll be writing about how you saved him from the Bosnian assassins we were all hunting down. But I’d keep my head down for a while, if I were you. And I wouldn’t be tempted to skip the country. That’s official, by the way.”

“Right.”

“Croatia may not be recognized by anybody out there just yet, but one day, if we’re accepted as something more than just some place for the Yugoslav army to piss all over, the government here will have extradition treaties. And if I know Kakav, he’ll be itching to use them.”

“What if the Yugoslav army wins?”

“Then we’ve all got problems, haven’t we.”

“At least the Bosnians won’t be bothering us.”

“That’s true.”

“Irena called. She said the Bosnians are still at the hospital. Apparently they’re not telling anyone much of anything. They’ll be spending some time in jail on weapons and attempted murder charges. One of their guns was linked to a shooting of a group of teenage hooligans.”

“She got back okay? I was a bit worried about whether she’d make it out when they started shutting the borders,” Anzulović said.

“She made it out. Took a flight from Vienna. Only ended up missing a day’s work in the end.”

“She’s superhuman,” Anzulović said.

“She is.”

“She’s best out of here. It’s going to be a shitshow before long.”

“She’s coming back.”

“What?” It was the most animated della Torre had ever seen his boss. “She’s what?”

“She’s coming back. Seems to think that she’ll do more good as a doctor here than as a kidney-stone photographer in London.”

“Crazy girl.” Anzulović shook his head.

“What about the Pilgrim thing?”

“What about it?”

“The file has to do with a bunch of nuclear centrifuges the Swedes were selling us in the mid-1980s and we were selling on. Somebody doesn’t want people to know about it.”

“That sounds like a good idea, not knowing. I think we’ll forget all about that stuff and hope it goes away, that’s what I think,” Anzulović said.

“I was never interested in the first place.”

“I wish I believed you. Anyway, I don’t think the Dispatcher will be bothering you. The orders came from Belgrade, and if he’s still an agent of Belgrade’s and living in Zagreb, now that the bang-bang has started he won’t last too long. But I can’t guarantee it,” Anzulović said. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce? Go to your father’s and enjoy the sun while you can. You’re on disability right now. I’ll square it with Kakav. I’ll see what I can do about keeping you out of Goli Otok once people turn their attention back onto you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Listen, Gringo. There’s a short supply of good people. Of good intelligence people. You’re going to be needed a lot more out here than in some prison cell. Even Kakav will realize that. Get better and then we’ll see.”

“Thanks, Anzulović.” Della Torre got up to leave. “Where are they moving us to? Police headquarters?”

“Think they tell me top secret stuff like that? I have no idea. I have no idea when we’re vacating this place. Can I make a suggestion to you?”

“What?”

“I’ve got those hobby files of yours. You can have them back, but I think, quite frankly, you ought to make a nice bonfire out of them before they get you into any more trouble.”

“Sure thing.”

“And Gringo . . .”

Della Torre had just opened the door. “What?”

“She was a peach, that one in London. Much as I love Irena, that Grace Kelly of yours was a real peach. You’re a lucky man.”

“Funny. I don’t feel it,” he said, and closed the door behind him.