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Charles leaned back into his seat, involuntarily checking the side mirror. He lowered the volume as a woman tried with limited success to carry a high E-note. Then he cut it off. Angela was being cagey about the central facts of this case—the why of all that money—but that could wait. Right now he wanted to visualize the events. “When did they arrive at the coast?”
“Friday afternoon. The seventh.”
“Legends?”
“Frank, no. He was too well known for that. Leo used an old one, Benjamin Schneider, Austrian.”
“Next day, Saturday, was the trade. Which part of the docks?”
“I’ve got it written down.”
“Time?”
“Evening. Seven.”
“Frank disappears …?”
“Last seen at 4:00 A.M. Saturday morning. He was up until then drinking with Bogdan Krizan, the local SOVA head. They’re old friends. Then, around two in the afternoon, the hotel cleaning staff found Leo’s body.”
“What about the dock? Anyone see what happened at seven?”
Again, she glanced into the rearview. “We were too late. The Slovenes weren’t going to ask us why Frank was buying them toys. And we didn’t know about Leo’s body until after seven. His papers were good enough to confuse the Austrian embassy for over eight hours.”
“For three million dollars you couldn’t have sent a couple more watchers?”
Angela tightened her jaw. “Maybe, but hindsight doesn’t do us any good now.”
The incompetence surprised Charles; then again, it didn’t. “Whose call was it?”
When she looked in the mirror yet again, her jaw was tighter, her cheeks flushed. So it was her fault, he thought, but she said, “Frank wanted me to stay in Vienna.”
“It was Frank Dawdle’s idea to go off with three million dollars and only one watcher?”
“I know the man. You don’t.”
She’d said those words without moving her lips. Charles felt the urge to tell her that he did know her boss. He’d worked with him once, in 1996, to get rid of a retired communist spy from some nondescript Eastern European country. But she wasn’t supposed to know about that. He touched her shoulder to show a little sympathy. “I won’t talk to Tom until we’ve got some real answers. Okay?”
She finally looked at him with a weary smile. “Thanks, Milo.”
“It’s Charles.”
The smile turned sardonic. “I wonder if you even have a real name.”
3 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
Their hour-long drive skirted the Italian border, and as they neared the coast the highway opened up and the foliage thinned. The warm morning sun glinted off the road as they passed Koper and Izola, and Charles watched the low shrubs, the Mediterranean architecture, and the ZIMMER-FREI signs that littered each turnoff. It reminded him just how beautiful this tiny stretch of coast truly was. Less than thirty miles that had been pulled back and forth between Italians, Yugoslavs, and Slovenes over centuries of regional warfare.
To their right, they caught occasional glimpses of the Adriatic, and through the open window he smelled salt. He wondered if his own salvation lay in something like this. Disappear, and spend the rest of his years under a hot sun on the sea. The kind of climate that dries and burns the imbalance out of you. But he pushed that aside, because he already knew the truth: Geography solves nothing.
He said, “We can’t do this unless you tell me the rest.”
“What rest?” She spoke as if she had no idea.
“The why. Why Frank Dawdle was sent down here with three million dollars.”
To the rearview, she said, “War criminal. Bosnian Serb. Big fish.”
A small pink hotel passed, and then Portorož Bay opened up, full of sun and glimmering water. “Which one?”
“Does it really matter?”
He supposed it didn’t. Karadžić, Mladić, or any other wanted ić—the story was always the same. They, as well as the Croat zealots on the other side of the battle lines, had all had a hand in the Bosnian genocides that had helped turn a once-adored multiethnic country into an international pariah. Since 1996, these men had been fugitives, hidden by sympathizers and corrupt officials, faced with charges from the UN’s International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Crimes against humanity, crimes against life and health, genocide, breaches of the Geneva conventions, murder, plunder, and violations of the laws and customs of war. Charles gazed at the Adriatic, sniffing the wind. “The UN’s offering five million for these people.”
“Oh, this guy wanted five,” Angela said as she slowed behind a line of cars with Slovenian, German, and Italian plates. “But all he had was an address, and he demanded the money up front so he could disappear. The UN didn’t trust him, turned him down flat, so some smart young man at Langley decided we should purchase it ourselves for three. A PR coup. We buy ourselves the glory of an arrest and once again point out the UN’s incompetence.” She shrugged. “Five or three—either way, you’re a millionaire.”
“What do we know about him?”
“He wouldn’t tell us anything, but Langley figured it out. Dušan Masković, a Sarajevo Serb who joined the militias in the early days. He’s part of the entourage that’s been hiding the big ones in the Republika Srpska hills. Two weeks ago, he left their employ and contacted the UN Human Rights office in Sarajevo. Apparently, they get people like him every day. So little Dušan put in a call to our embassy in Vienna and found a sympathetic ear.”
“Why not just take care of it there? In Sarajevo?”
The traffic moved steadily forward, and they passed shops with flowers and international newspapers. “He didn’t want to collect in Bosnia. Didn’t even want it set up through the Sarajevo embassy. And he didn’t want anyone stationed in the ex-Yugoslav republics involved.”
“He’s no fool.”
“From what we figure, he got hold of a boat in Croatia and was going to wait in the Adriatic until 7:00 P.M. on Saturday. Then he could slip in, make the trade, and slip out again before he’d have to register with the harbormaster.”
“I see,” Charles said, because despite his returning stomach cramps he finally had enough information to picture the various players and the ways they connected.
“Want me to take care of the room?”
“Let’s check the dock first.”
Portorož’s main harbor lay at the midpoint of the bay; behind it sat the sixties architecture of the Hotel Slovenia, its name written in light blue against white concrete, a surf motif. They parked off the main road and wandered around shops selling model sailboats and T-shirts with PORTOROž and I LOVE SLOVENIA and MY PARENTS WENT TO SLOVENIA AND ALL I GOT … scribbled across them. Sandaled families sucking ice cream cones and cigarettes wandered leisurely past. Behind the shops lay a row of small piers full of vacation boats.
“Which one?” asked Charles.
“Forty-seven.”
He led the way, hands in his pockets, as if he and his lady-friend were enjoying the view and the hot sun. The crews and captains on the motor-and sailboats paid them no attention. It was nearly noon, time for siestas and drink. Germans and Slovenes dozed on their hot decks, and the only voices they heard were from children who couldn’t fall asleep.
Forty-seven was empty, but at forty-nine a humble yacht with an Italian flag was tied up. On its deck, a heavy woman was trying to peel a sausage.
“Buon giorno!” said Charles.
The woman inclined her head politely.
Charles’s Italian was only passable, so he asked Angela to find out when the woman had arrived in Portorož. Angela launched into a machine-gun Roman-Italian that sounded like a blast of insults, but the sausage woman smiled and waved her hands as she threw the insults back. It ended with Angela waving a “Grazie mille.”
Charles waved, too, then leaned close to Angela as they walked away. “Well?”
“She got here Saturday night. There was a motorboat beside theirs—dirty, she tells me—but it left soon after they arrived. She guesses around seven thirty, eight.”
After a couple more steps, Angela realized Charles had stopped somewhere behind her. His hands were on his hips as he stared at the empty spot with a small placard marked “47.” “How clean do you think that water is?”
“I’ve seen worse.”
Charles handed over his jacket, then unbuttoned his shirt as he kicked off his shoes.
“You’re not,” said Angela.
“If the trade happened at all, then it probably didn’t go well. If it led to a fight, something might have dropped in here.”
“Or,” said Angela, “if Dušan’s smart, he took Frank’s body out into the Adriatic and dropped him overboard.”
Charles wanted to tell her that he’d already ruled Dušan Masković out as a murderer—there was nothing for Dušan to gain by killing a man who was going to give him money for a simple address with no questions asked—but changed his mind. He didn’t have time for a fight.
He stripped to his boxers, hiding the pangs in his stomach as he bent to pull off the slacks. He wore no undershirt, and his chest was pale from a week spent under Amsterdam’s gray skies. “If I don’t come up …”
“Don’t look at me,” said Angela. “I can’t swim.”
“Then get Signora Sausage to come for me.”
Before she could think of a reply, Charles had jumped feet-first into the shallow bay. It was a shock to his drug-bubbly nerves, and there was an instant when he almost breathed in; he had to force himself not to. He paddled back to the surface and wiped his face. Angela, on the edge of the pier, smiled down at him. “Done already?”
“Don’t wrinkle my shirt.” He submerged again, then opened his eyes.
With the sun almost directly above, the shadows beneath the water were stark. He saw the dirty white hulls of boats, then the blackness where their undersides curved into darkness. He ran his hands along the Italian boat at number forty-nine, following its lines toward the bow, where a thick cord ran up to the piles, holding the boat secure. He let go of the line and sank into the heavy darkness under the pier, using hands for sight. He touched living things— a rough shell, slime, the scales of a paddling fish—but as he prepared to return to the surface, he found something else. A heavy work boot, hard-soled. It was attached to a foot, jeans, a body. Again, he fought to keep himself from inhaling. He tugged, but the stiff, cold corpse was hard to move.
He came up for air, ignored Angela’s taunts, then submerged again. He used the pilings for leverage. Once he’d dragged the body into the partial light around the Italian boat, through the cloud of kicked sand, he saw why it had been such a struggle. The bloated body—a dark-bearded man—was rope-bound at the waist to a length of heavy metal tubing: a piece of an engine, he guessed.
He broke the surface gasping. This water, which had seemed so clean a minute before, was now filthy. He spat out leakage, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Above him, hands on her knees, Angela said, “I can hold my breath longer than that. Watch.”
“Help me up.”
She set his clothes in a pile, kneeled on the pier, and reached down to him. Soon he was over the edge, sitting with his knees up, dripping. A breeze set him shivering.
“Well?” said Angela.
“What does Frank look like?”
She reached into her blazer and tugged out a small photograph she’d brought to show to strangers. A frontal portrait, morose but efficiently lit, so that all Frank Dawdle’s features were visible. A clean-shaven man, bald on top, white hair over the ears, sixty or so.
“He didn’t grow a beard since this, did he?”
Angela shook her head, then looked worried. “But the last known photo of Masković …”
He got to his feet. “Unless the Portorož murder rate has gone wild, that’s your Serb down there.”
“I don’t—”
Charles cut her off before she could argue: “We’ll talk with the SOVA, but you need to call Vienna. Now. Check Frank’s office. See what’s missing. Find out what was on his computer before he left.”
He slipped into his shirt, his wet body bleeding the white cotton gray. Angela started fooling with her phone, but her fingers had trouble with the buttons. Charles took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
“This is serious. Okay? But don’t freak out until we know everything. And let’s not tell the Slovenes about the body. We don’t want them holding us for questioning.”
Again, she nodded.
Charles let go of her and grabbed his jacket, pants, and shoes, then began walking back up the pier, toward the shore. From her boat, her chubby knees to her chin, the Italian woman let out a low whistle. “Bello,” she said.
4 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
An hour and a half later, they were preparing to leave again. Charles wanted to drive, but Angela put up a fight. It was the shock—without him having to say a word, she’d put it together herself. Frank Dawdle, her beloved boss, had killed Leo Bernard, killed Dušan Masković, and walked off with three million dollars of the U.S. government’s money.
The most damning piece of evidence came from her call to Vienna. The hard drive of Dawdle’s computer was missing. Based on power usage, the in-house computer expert believed it had been removed sometime Friday morning, just before Frank and Leo departed for Slovenia.
Despite this, she clung to a new, hopeful theory: The Slovenes were responsible. Frank might have taken his hard drive, but he would only have done so under coercion. His old SOVA buddies were threatening him. When they met with Bogdan Krizan, the local SOVA head, she glared across the Hotel Slovenia table while the old man gobbled a plate of fried calamari and explained that he’d spent Friday night with Frank Dawdle, drinking in his room.
“What do you mean—you visited him?” she said. “Didn’t you have work to do?”
Krizan paused over his food, holding his fork loosely. He had an angular face that seemed to expand when he shrugged in his exaggerated Balkan manner. “We’re old friends, Miss Yates. Old spies. Drinking together until the early morning is what we do. Besides, I’d heard about Charlotte. I offered sympathy in a bottle.”
“Charlotte?” asked Charles.
“His wife,” Krizan said, then corrected: “Ex-wife.”
Angela nodded. “She left him about six months ago. He took it pretty hard.”
“Tragic,” said Krizan.
To Charles, the picture was nearly complete. “What did he tell you about his visit here?”
“Nothing. I asked, of course, many times. But he’d only wink at me. Now, I’m beginning to wish he’d trusted me.”
“Me, too.”
“Is he in trouble?” Krizan said this without any visible worry.
Charles shook his head. Angela’s cell phone rang, and she left the table.
“There’s a bitter woman,” said Krizan, nodding at her backside. “You know what Frank calls her?”
Charles didn’t.
“My blue-eyed wonder.” He grinned. “Lovely man, but he wouldn’t know a lesbian if she punched him in the nose.”
Charles leaned closer as Krizan dug into his calamari. “You can’t think of anything else?”
