Five minutes later Vlado was prying open the grate of the storm sewer and stepping back into the shallow water. An hour later he’d fought his way back through the razor wire and was staring out the end of the tunnel into the river. Both banks seemed quiet. It wouldn’t do to head onto the streets here, though. He dropped back into the river, sliding down the slimy rocks feet first, splashing at the bottom. He began wading downstream, scanning the banks as he moved.
At the first spillway the surge knocked him down as he fell in the three-foot waterfall. The weight of the falls pounded down, but he pulled himself free. Soaked to the bone once again, he trudged through the thigh-deep water. He passed three more spillways before he figured it was safe to climb up the bank.
Safe was a relative term, of course, because he had reached the portion of the river that wound through a narrow no-man’s-land between Grbavica and the western side of downtown, a few hundred yards west of the Holiday Inn.
These areas were supposedly mined. But he also knew that people desperate for firewood sometimes crept into them at night, rummaging among shattered doors and window frames in search of anything that would burn. Otherwise, one could generally count on only a few rats for company.
Vlado stepped inside an abandoned building that had been split down the middle like a hickory log, seeming to defy half the laws of physics by standing at all. Sheltered by the walls, he spent the next half hour poking around for wood, striking it rich on the second floor up when he found a splintered window frame dangling from its opening. He wrenched it loose and carefully stepped down the stairwell. He pulled free enough pieces to kindle a small flame with his cigarette lighter, the smoke drifting up through the huge fissure in the building.
He decided to wait there until an hour before first light. Then he would make his move, sprinting back across to his own side of the city. If he hit a mine, then he hit a mine. If he was shot, then he was shot. It was easy to think that way after the evening he had just survived and, as he watched the small flames, he wondered why Kasic hadn’t had him killed earlier, and why his investigation had been allowed to get as far as it had. Sure, there would have been some embarrassment if he had died, but nothing that couldn’t have been explained away to the U.N. by arresting a few shady characters to take the blame.
Then, the reason occurred to him. Kasic had hoped to use him to find the transfer files, and the rest of the missing evidence. As long as they were unaccounted for, he and the whole operation were vulnerable. Who better than someone under his own thumb to track it down for him. And with Damir reporting most of Vlado’s movements, it had almost worked, until Vlado had disappeared into a place where even Damir and Kasic couldn’t follow.
The fire had at last begun to warm him. He rubbed his hands above the small flame, wondering how Jasmina and Sonja must be spending their evening, and he began to pace through the debris of the building’s first floor.
The room seemed to have once been part of a large apartment. Here and there in the wreckage of crumbled plaster and broken glass were wrinkled old photos jarred loose from their frames. Faces looked up at him, the young and the old, the married and unmarried, with their prewar smiles. He wondered where they all were now, what they’d managed to take with them in the rush to leave this building, and if they would ever return. Or even want to.
As he wandered from room to room, staying clear of the windows in case some vigilant sniper should be watching at this wee, small hour, he imagined himself in Berlin, strolling about Jasmina’s darkened flat.
He knew something of the look of the place from photographs, the small but cheerfully painted rooms with a child’s crayon drawings in evidence everywhere. He passed through a doorway, picturing a small bed before him, a child’s form curled beneath the sheets. He leaned to kiss her brow, a caring father seeing to it that his daughter was safe in the night. He pulled the sheet more snugly around her shoulders, then crossed the hallway, following the scent of Jasmina’s perfume, turning back the covers to climb in, then drawing himself close against her back, his stomach fluttery as he felt himself growing stiff against her. He placed a hand on her waist and she stirred, her hair brushing against his cheek as she turned to meet him. He felt the warmth of her lips.
Outside, on a nearby hillside, a New Year’s celebrant fired a final reprise from his mortar before turning in for the night. The deep boom startled Vlado, who found himself staring into an empty room, its ceiling torn halfway to the floor in great shards of plaster and batting. He checked his watch and saw that it was nearly 5:30. Soon the sky would begin to brighten, though it was still a few hours before sunrise.
He pulled back the plastic from his satchel and pawed through the contents until he found his notebook, flipping through the pages to locate the correct address. He went over the best route in his head, then crept out the door and around the corner, heading away from the river and out of no-man’s-land, angling toward the Holiday Inn.
There was nothing for it now but to run, and he gave it all he had, stepping with as much care as possible through a rubble of bricks, stones, and twisted metal, while wishing he had enough time to check for the little metal boxes with their tripwires, the most common sort of mine found in these places.
On one stride, his trailing foot indeed snagged a wire, and he shouted as he stumbled, a strangled cry of panic, but he kept going. It was probably nothing but the tangle of an old radio, or a fallen telephone line.
He reached Sniper Alley, which for once seemed a symbol of safety, and sprinted across, his footsteps slapping loudly on the pavement, a lonely noise at this hour of the morning. He didn’t rest until he’d passed behind the sheltering bulk of the Holiday Inn, then he slowed to a walk, panting to catch his breath. He looked around, but there were no police, nor anyone else. When he reached the next street he turned left, heading west, for the highrise apartment building at 712 Bosanska Street. He climbed three flights of a dim stairway, through a musk of rot and old urine, and arrived at the doorway of apartment 37.
He knocked, and in a few moments Amira Hodzic opened the door, sleep still deep in her face. She wore a heavy cotton robe belted tightly at the waist.
“I need your help,” Vlado said. “I’m sorry.”
Her face was clear of makeup, her hair tangled, and her eyes tired and bloodshot. Vlado’s appearance was doubtless more frightful than when he’d reached Mrs. Vitas house. But she didn’t appear alarmed, only weary, and perhaps a trifle put out.
“Why am I not surprised to see you,” she said, then paused on the threshhold before opening the door wider and turning inside. “Come in,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll make you coffee. You look like you need it. But quietly, please, my children are sleeping.”
She turned to face him again. “Would you like to wash? I can heat some water.”
“That would be heavenly.” Although it was probably as much a favor for herself as for him. By now he must smell like a sewer rat.
He stood in the tiny bathroom, peeling off his sopping pants, shirt, underwear, and socks. It was chilly in here, but not too bad. And anything was better than staying in those clammy clothes.
A few minutes later, she knocked lightly. “The pot of water is outside the door.”
He wondered briefly at this display of modesty from the woman who had undressed in front of him for a few packs of cigarettes. Then he forgot everything else as he felt the luxury of the hot water, sponging it across his chest, his legs. He submerged his face in the pot. He held his breath, eyes shut, then pulled out with a gasp, dripping. He almost felt like laughing at the simple joy of it.