The Heart of Hell Read online

  Somehow Grimston seemed to have sensed what was going on, because his look of self-satisfaction evaporated. He spoke to his men and they moved with alacrity. Then he picked up his radio.

  “He can’t run anywhere,” Anzulović said. “He’ll be picked up soon enough. The military police have checkpoints just beyond here. They know to stop him.”

  “And when they find him, what happens to us?” della Torre asked.

  “We all go back to Zagreb, and both of you will have a chat with our friends. I’m afraid the minister has already signed an agreement for Strumbić’s extradition. In your case, we’re refusing.”

  “So, one morning on my way to work, a car hits me and runs, and that’s the end of this particular problem for the Americans,” della Torre said.

  “We’ll give you all the protection possible. You can go to your father’s house, and we’ll post a surveillance team to make sure you’re left alone.”

  “Like they left Libero alone.”

  “He was an old man,” Anzulović said. “I’m sorry, Gringo. I’ll do what I can. But we’ll all go the way of Vukovar if the Americans don’t help. And we need to show them we’re on their side.”

  Della Torre nodded. A wave of self-pity rolled over him.

  They turned and began to make their way back towards Grimston. To his right, della Torre saw Boban and two of his men heading back towards the cornfield, their shoulders bent under the weight of emergency supplies for the hospital. Boban had hardly had a break and was now making the treacherous journey again. Della Torre admired the man for his stoicism, for his single-minded focus on doing what he knew was right.

  “I’ll join up with you in a second,” della Torre said to Anzulović. “I’m just going to say goodbye to Captain Boban. It’s the least I can do. Especially since Irena is in his hands.”

  Anzulović made a little grunt of approval.

  As della Torre hurried towards Boban, he passed the row of body bags, black, zipped up, neatly assembled along the flattened grass by the side of the pitted road. Two militiamen stood sentry. Della Torre nodded at them in sympathy and they smiled back at him, looking happier than they ought to under the circumstances. For a moment the incongruity of their expressions troubled him, and then he decided they’d just shared a joke. Gallows humour.

  When he got to the end of the row of black-shrouded corpses, he saw a large white handbag. The sort a grandmother might own.

  He stopped and opened it. It was empty. And then he understood what the two soldiers were smiling about. They’d hit the jackpot. And Strumbić had escaped. Strumbić would always be safe. He had the Deutschmarks and he had the diamonds. He had Dragomanov’s papers, the file on Pilgrim that incriminated the Americans in Olof Palme’s assassination, and he would know how to use them. There were no limits to his resourcefulness and ingenuity.

  Della Torre was overcome by a powerful feeling of pride and inspiration because of Strumbić, and because of Boban, who had just reached the edge of the cornfield with his men, and because of Irena and her Dr. Cohen. There, among the tall stalks of corn, yellowing tops rippling like an oriflamme, was a bloody path that would lead della Torre from his past and into his future. For too long he’d tried to navigate the competing forces in his life using what few skills he possessed. Maybe he hadn’t been bold enough. Or brave enough.

  Now he knew what he needed to do.

  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus . . .

  Maybe the poets were right; maybe constellations high above really did weep. Maybe comets blazed.

  “Boban. Captain, wait,” della Torre shouted, running to close the gap. “Here, let me lend you a hand.”

  EPILOGUE

  ON NOVEMBER 18, 1991, the Yugoslav army, led by Serb paramilitaries, finally overran Vukovar after nearly three months of siege and bombardment. It is estimated that the city suffered the most massive and sustained barrage of fire in Europe since Stalingrad.

  By then, most of the Croat defenders had escaped through the cornfields, leaving civilians and the wounded behind. Those people, they thought, would be protected by human rights and military conventions accepted across Europe since the fall of the Nazis.

  They were wrong.

  Women and men at the hospital — doctors, nurses, patients, and those who had gone seeking refuge — were separated. The women were bused out to an internment camp and were released back to Croatia after some days.

  The men were taken to a farm south of Vukovar, where they were kept in a barn until it was their time to be taken out into a cornfield and executed. In all, some 260 were killed in this manner after the end of hostilities.

  Years later, Croatia recovered the territory. Since then almost all the remains found in the mass graves have been identified. Among them were a number of foreigners, either mercenaries or adventurers or idealists just there to help, though the name of Dr. David Cohen does not appear in the memorials.

  Nor does that of Captain Boban. Or Major Marko della Torre.

  But not all the dead have been found. Nor are all those who perished remembered.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is a work of fiction, albeit hung very loosely on a framework of history. The destruction and suffering caused by the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s was enormous and left none of the country’s ethnic populations unscathed. But this book covers only the beginning of the strife, the sieges of Dubrovnik and Vukovar, and only from a very narrow perspective.

  The timing and circumstances of the events I describe aren’t necessarily as they happened. I’ve used authorial licence to shape history to suit my plot. Needless to say, the characters are all products of my imagination. And it’s purely coincidental if they resemble anyone living or dead.

  Steve Higgins was a friend and a journalist, though never in the Balkans. On the other hand, the real Jack Grimston is a journalist who reported from the former Yugoslavia, albeit not during the war. While I can’t think of a gentler or kinder person, he has the perfect name for a secret service hard man and I thank him for lending it to me.

  I would encourage anyone interested in the history of Yugo­slavia’s violent end to read Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia and Allan Little and Laura Silber’s The Death of Yugoslavia. Both books are exceedingly well written and skilfully navigate the reader through an often complex subject.

  I also found contemporary newspaper accounts and television and radio reports useful in developing a sense of place and time. Alec Russell’s memoir of reporting from the Balkans during that period, Prejudice and Plum Brandy, includes a terrific first-person depiction of what it was like to be in Dubrovnik during the siege.

  The Internet is full of stories of the war in Vukovar and Dubrovnik. Two I found particularly affecting were “A Girl in My Arms: A Story of a Paediatrician from Vukovar” by Branka Šipek, from the journal Archives of Diseases in Childhood, and a collection of witness statements from Vukovar, The Town Was the Target, by Anica Marić and Ante Nazor.

  Though I visited the former Yugoslavia during the war, I was never anywhere near danger. But my sister, Nives Mattich, lived there throughout the 1990s. As an aid worker, she witnessed the attacks on Zagreb, the siege and destruction of Sarajevo, the NATO attacks on Belgrade, and much else besides. I am deeply indebted to her for giving me an inkling of what it must have been like and admire her stoicism and bravery to have voluntarily endured numerous discomforts and dangers.

  Other accounts came from relatives and friends, many of whom lost those they loved during the war.

  The book is dedicated to my parents, who left Yugoslavia at the height of Tito’s powers. It is sobering to think that had they stayed, I would almost certainly have had to serve in the military, on one side or the other, during the conflict. I am grateful to them for their decision, however hard they sometimes found the life o
f immigrants: having to learn a new language, to adapt to new cultures, to struggle and persevere through what for a long time was outright poverty in order to give their children better lives and more hopeful futures.

  I owe further thanks to my wife, Lucy, and my children, Pippa, Tilly, Kit, and Bee, for their support and forbearance as I sank into the corner of the sofa to write yet another book when there were so many other things I ought to have been doing.

  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention others who gave me encouragement, moral support, or just a welcome night away from the computer, including, in no particular order, Andrew Steinmetz, Fred Biggar, Alistair MacDonald, Patrick Amory, Robert Kirkby, Beverley Mackenzie, Andrew Shutter, Bill and Elaine Vinten, and, not least, Luke Vinten.

  The greatest thanks, though, have to go to my editor, Janie Yoon, to copyeditor Peter Norman, and to my agent, Hilary McMahon, all of whom made this book not only possible, but as good as it could possibly be.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALEN MATTICH is the author of Zagreb Cowboy and Killing Pilgrim, the first two novels in the critically acclaimed Marko della Torre series. Born in Zagreb, Croatia, he grew up in Libya, Canada, and the United States. A financial journalist and columnist, he’s now based in London, U.K., and writes for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”