I regret not to have more specific information, but I believe we have no evidence that the subject gave aid or comfort of any sort to the enemy, nor do we have reason to believe he shared any information of military value.
Don’t hesitate to call if I or the Bureau can be of further assistance. Give my warmest regards to Ruth.
J. Edgar
25
Jason stiffly eased himself into one of the contemporary chairs that was every bit as uncomfortable as it looked. He propped his throbbing leg up on the chair’s mate. The room was furnished in what some might call “Danish Modern.” Others might call it IKEA. In any event, the room, one of only twenty-six, was clean and inexpensive, if totally bland. And cold. A cursory inspection had revealed no individual thermostat. Whoever controlled the central heat either planned on saving money on creature comforts or enjoyed arctic temperatures. Jason had never stayed in a hotel where he could see his own breath before. He should have guessed heat was not a significant amenity of the hotel when he had presented his George Simmons passport to a desk clerk in a fur-lined parka.
Jason turned to look out of the room’s window, where swirling snowflakes were comets in the light from the hotel’s windows. Cold or not, he should consider himself lucky. He had disembarked from the train at the next stop, one of those for which there seemed no reason other than a man and woman, cardboard suitcases or boxes in hands, waiting to board. The conductor had been conspicuous in his absence. Jason surmised Natalia had bribed the regular conductor to render whatever assistance she might need and he’d taken the money and then kept out of sight. Had he earned whatever he had been paid, it would be Jason, not Natalia, at the bottom of that ravine.
It was hard to find good help.
Jason guessed he must have made quite an appearance as he painfully climbed down from the railcar with his trouser leg slashed and bloody. His jacket covered the blood his shirt had absorbed from the drenched carpet. He did draw the attention of a walrus-mustached old man wearing some sort of military colored jacket in a very dated Zastava 750 automobile, a product of the same company who had unsuccessfully inflicted the Yugo on the United States a couple of decades ago.
Mustache watched with open curiosity as Jason limped across the single track, looking both ways for possible transportation. He had exited the train prematurely to avoid the police likely to be swarming all over it once the near hysterical woman who had witnessed Natalia’s last moments could summon them. Now he needed medical help, but as far as he could see, he was in open country.
Clutching his suitcase, he limped toward the only vehicle in sight, the Zastava. The driver rolled down the window.
“Speak English?” Jason asked.
The answer was definitely not. Not a good sign.
Jason pointed to his bloody pants leg, making a sewing motion.
Mustache replied by rubbing a thumb against the fingers of one hand, the universal sign money was required.
Jason dug into a pocket and held out a handful of kuna.
Mustache considered the money, took it, counted it out, and returned some bills to Jason.
He motioned for Jason to go around and get in the passenger door. Grateful, Jason climbed in, the squeeze making him mindful the car had been designed under license from Fiat, a version of its diminutive 500.
Mustache’s lack of English skills did nothing to discourage conversation, or at least, his side of one. He chatted away, the inflection of his voice indicating questions Jason could neither understand nor answer. He could only hope the man understood he needed to see a physician.
Five minutes later, the little car rounded a curve in the mountainous combination of asphalt and potholes. Half a dozen houses, each a single story with red-tile roofs, bracketed the road. By now, flakes of snow were drifting down from higher elevations. Beyond the village, if it was large enough to deserve the description, a valley was filled with fog like a lake of mist. Jason would not have been surprised to see the clouds sweep aside like a stage curtain to reveal Count Dracula’s castle adorning one of the far peaks.
The car came to a stop in front of one of the houses. There was nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors other than the small red cross beside the door. Getting out of the tiny car, Jason almost fell. His head was spinning at a dizzying rate, and his legs felt like spaghetti. Mustache caught him, swinging an arm over his shoulder, and somehow managed to wrestle him inside. Bandage or not, Jason had lost more blood than he had thought.
The clinic was tidy, clean, and empty. Helping Jason onto the room’s examination table, Mustache pressed a buzzer. Less than a minute later, a middle-aged woman strode into the room, steel gray hair in a no-nonsense bun and still struggling into a long white lab coat. Jason guessed that, like many European doctors, she had set up practice in her home.
Mustache and the doctor exchanged words, possible greetings, and a question or two. He sat in the room’s only chair and lit a cigarette. Jason was so accustomed to the American Health Gestapo, he was surprised when there was no rebuke forthcoming from the doctor. Coat finally straight, she turned her attention to Jason. She produced a pair of surgical scissors and snipped away the bloody pant leg. Jason was thankful the killing knife was strapped to the other leg, sparing him questions best left unasked.
After applying a stinging antiseptic to the wound, she regarded him with a suspicion that needed no translation. “How?”
Stalling for an answer might result in a call to the police. Jason blurted out the first thing he could think of. “Slipped on the train, cut myself on the edge of the door.”
He was not certain she understood, but it was clear she was skeptical at the least. Wordlessly, she finished sterilizing the cut and turned to a metal cabinet. She held up a needle and sutures.
“No anesthetic,” she announced as she began to thread the needle.
She made no effort to explain whether she simply had none or chose not to use it. He decided not to ask for a bullet to bite.
Jason had endured worse. As an adviser to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, he had had a Russian bullet dug out of his back by a bayonet under flickering candlelight. A covert operation in Sub-Saharan Africa had ended with a two-day donkey ride with a broken leg using a rifle stock as a splint. The recollections did little to dim his present discomfort. Besides, the only mercy shown by pain was that it fades from memory almost as soon as it ends. We remember precisely the smell of a rose, the flavor of a favorite wine on the back of the tongue, but not the degree of agony. We recall there was pain but, once ceased, our brains have no measure of it.
Jason clinched his teeth. His eyes searched the room until they focused on a case clock in a far corner. The grain of the wood in which it was encased was without knots, indicating it had been taken from the heart of the tree. What tree? Jason concentrated on the swirls of the grain and the depth of color. Oak? No, more like walnut. He imagined the feel, the cool smoothness of the wood as it had been sanded, smelled the sawdust that had swirled around the skilled craftsman who had made that case.