Vlado laughed. “No, it’s with the new Acting Chief Juso Kasic.”
Damir arched his eyebrows. “Impressive,” he said. “I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot of him until this is over. And he’ll probably be very generous with offers of ‘technical assistance’ from his various thugs and leg-breakers, if I know those boys. At an official level they’ll keep their noses out of it to impress Washington and London and Paris. But if I were you I wouldn’t look over my shoulder too much. Might be a shock to see what’s lurking in your shadow.”
Vlado then broached a possibility he’d been mulling since Garovic had handed the case file back to him. “Of course, you could always help watch my back,” he said, gauging Damir’s reaction. “And I know I’ll need some help tracking down leads, such as they are. I’ll mention it to Kasic, if you’d like. I’d imagine the ministry will want this wrapped up pretty quick.”
“Are you serious?” Damir asked, a trace of puppyish eagerness in his tone. “Or more to the point, do you think Kasic will go along with it?”
“Can’t hurt to ask. Who knows, he may even have to say yes. Feels nice to have some leverage on those guys for change, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it is nice,” a smiling Damir agreed. “But remember. It’s probably exactly the way Kasic wants you to feel.”
CHAPTER 4
For all its power, the Interior Ministry had no heat in its downstairs lobby. Vlado joined seven others who were waiting, bundled in heavy coats and seated on battered vinyl chairs and couches. The brown linoleum floor was a wasteland of cigarette butts and small tumble-weeds of dust. Clouds of cigarette smoke barely masked the stench of urine from a backed up toilet down the hall. The stroking thrum of a generator could be heard from inside a small booth built of plywood and clear sheets of plastic, where a uniformed officer sat, acting as receptionist, taking names and phoning upstairs for authorizations that never seemed to come.
As Vlado waited he considered what he knew of Kasic. He was a man with a reputation for restraint, both in his anger and his goodwill, and this was said to be a product of his history. He had been a young man of impulse and scattered energies, whose sharp remarks and recklessness had stranded him for years in the great bulge of middle bureaucracy. Once he’d passed the age at which up-and-comers generally began to make their mark, plenty of people had written him off.
Then in the early eighties, as the rigid state machinery loosened and adjusted in the wake of Tito’s death, Kasic belatedly began to rise, catching up to more fortunate peers and then surpassing them. He moved quickly through the Party ranks under vague titles that seemed to place him as an important man in state security. Those on the outside could never be sure if his ascension was guided by his own power or someone else’s, and that seemed to be the way Kasic preferred it.
By the time the Interior Ministry began putting together its new police force he was a natural choice for the heirarchy, and he fell into line behind Vitas as a loyal lieutenant, soon known for his ruthless efficiency.
Like Vitas he had made his name in the October raids, supervising the heavy work in the maneuver that flushed, then trapped Zarko on the second and decisive day. When an errant mortar shell from his unit landed a block north of the mark, killing three old residents of a crumbling flat, he’d flinched, but not for long. “ ‘A small price in the long run,’ that’s what they’ll say around here,” he’d concluded on the spot to his subordinates, who’d naturally agreed.
Vlado looked around the lobby at the others, all men. They seemed bored, as if they’d been waiting for hours. Two had dozed off in spite of the cold.
But after only a few minutes the man in the booth rapped on the plywood and waved Vlado upstairs, shouting in a muffled voice, “Mr. Kasic is waiting. Second floor.”
Vlado trotted up the steps to warm himself, passing security warnings and propaganda posters taped to the walls. BOSNIAN ARMY ON THE BOSNIAN BORDER proclaimed one poster, done up in a nouveau social-realist style. The black silhouette of a grim, angular soldier rose out of jagged black-and-white hills against a purple backdrop, as if he had become part of the very mountains he was defending.
Kasic stood at the top of the steps at an open door in the pose of a tolerant schoolmaster waiting to usher the last pupil into the classroom. His silvery black hair was close cropped at the sides, and as Vlado stepped closer he saw that Kasic’s face was a landscape of sharp angles and deep shadows, as lean as an athlete’s, reminiscent of the soldier on the poster. Yet it was also still pumped full of vigor and color here in mid-January in this city where everything had grown ashy and pale, as if he’d been working out on a clean gym floor of varnished oak, all bright lights and fuggy heat.
He shook hands, grasping hard with a huge hand. Vlado had noticed him before at joint security meetings and official gatherings, a man whose intensity leaned out at you across desks, dinner tables, and interrogation rooms, giving the impression both of earnestness and of appetite.
The tendency among others was either to pass him off as a toadying yes-man showing off his enthusiasm for superiors or as a man truly wrapped up in his mission. Vlado had never known him well enough to decide.
Kasic led Vlado across an open area of cluttered desks, where men in the dark blue uniforms of the ministry police busily went about whatever it was they did up here. Vlado counted five space heaters, each working at full power. The room was comfortable, even cozy
They reached a large office with CHIEF OF SPECIAL POLICE on the door. So, he had already moved in, Vlado thought, scanning the walls and desk for signs of Vitas as he settled into a chair. He was mildly angry to find none. He’d hoped to be the first to search Vitas’s office, but it was obvious he’d been beaten to the punch.
Kasic slid behind Vitas’s old desk, glancing about him for a moment as if still getting his bearings, then leaned forward, clasping his hands before him on a stack of notes. His voice emerged in the deep fullness of a command, although his words were welcoming.
“Now then, Vlado. It is good to see you’re on the case. I have done some checking and found you a thorough man and a solid investigator, although I must admit your lack of experience gives me pause. Less than two years as a detective before the war began, and four years total, correct?”
Vlado nodded.
“And I gather you haven’t been too busy since the beginning of the war. At least not with this sort of case.”
“Correct.”
“I also gather that your boss, Mr. Garovic, while helpful, was not very eager to turn you loose you on this. He is, I take it, a somewhat careful man.”
Vlado allowed himself a brief smile. “That’s putting it mildly,” he said.
“Well, I can understand his hesitance. A sensitive matter, this one. And by all rights this should be our case. If it weren’t for some special considerations, we’d be handling it, and handling it professionally and well, I have no doubt.”
“Special considerations?”
“The U.N. On some days we can’t even take a piss around here anymore without three of them asking if they can come along. We feel we have to prove ourselves every day, then file a report on it in triplicate. If I had my way I’d just as soon tell them to mind their own business- it’s not as if they’re running the tightest ship themselves. I can’t tell you how many times we could have cracked down on the French or the Egyptians, brokering whores and cigarettes, or peddling U.N. passes to smuggle people out of the country at three thousand marks a pop. And we all know they’ve been licking the boots of the other side throughout the war.
“But for all that, we, or, that is, people far above me, feel that we can turn the corner with them with the right kind of results in this department. And if we turn the corner with them, then maybe we can turn the corner on getting the right kind of help for fighting this war. Bigger guns, antitank weapons-you’ve heard the laundry list before, and it’s not going to be filled anytime soon as long as the arms embargo’s still in effect. But in some quarters, at least, there is momentum.”