Killing Pilgrim (17 page)

“You
know, Gringo, I once felt bad for myself that I didn’t have any shoes that fit. My feet were sore. But then I saw a man with one leg. And you know what I thought to myself?” Strumbić asked. “I said, there’s a man who’s only got half my troubles.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke. “I wanted to congratulate you, Major.”

“News travels.”

“Take a seat, colleague.”

“Thanks,” della Torre said, not sounding the least grateful, as he found a chair under a stack of files.

Strumbić sat there, grinning. He was half a head shorter than della Torre and about five years older, powerfully built, though gone to fat. He’d taken some colour over the summer during his enforced absence from work, though della Torre knew it was a farmer’s tan. Even so, there was an underlying unhealthiness to Strumbić. His close-cropped hair had mostly gone grey. Jaundiced and bloodshot eyes. His teeth a mix of gunmetal and yellow. It made the grin that much more gruesome.

“I’ve been transferred to military intelligence.”

“I’d heard.”

“Thought you might be a bit more pleased about it, Gringo.”

“When are you going to sign the affidavit, Julius?”

“Affidavit?”

“The one that says I didn’t shoot you.”

“But you did.”

“Julius . . .”

“All right, all right. I’ll think about it.”

Strumbić had that look about him, like a waiter hovering for a tip.

“How much is it going to cost me?” della Torre asked.

“Life isn’t just about money, Gringo.”

“Julius, you’ve . . .” Della Torre didn’t know what to say. Strumbić was the most corrupt cop in Zagreb. He always had been. He was without a doubt the richest person della Torre had ever met, though he hid his money well. But not so well as to stop della Torre from stealing a considerable amount of it. Had Strumbić forgiven him for stealing his money, his leather jacket, his cigarettes? For shooting him and locking him in his own wine cellar? They had a complicated relationship.

“Listen, Gringo, I’ll let bygones be bygones. I’ll sign the form, though we’ll have to think about how you might pay back what you owe me. But really, all I want is a little friendliness, a little understanding, now that we’re going to be working together.”

“Friendliness and understanding?”

“I understand you’ve been talking to some Americans. I’d like to be friends with them too. That’s all.”

Della Torre bent back to look at the ceiling and then out the window. He didn’t know how Strumbić had come by the information. Possibly Kakav. It didn’t matter. Anything worth knowing, he’d find out about eventually.

“Julius, they don’t want to know you. Take it from me.”

“Course they don’t. But that’s because they aren’t yet aware of how helpful I can be. What a good friend I can be. That’s where you come in.”

“You’re not the sort of friend they need or want. You’re the sort of friend exactly nobody needs.”

“And this from a man whose life I saved.”

“Only after doing everything you possibly could to get me killed.”

“Let’s leave old arguments to lie, eh? These are new times. Era of the Americans. Gringo, wherever Americans go, they’re the people to know. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

Strumbić was right. Americans meant money. Endless amounts of it. And Strumbić could smell money no matter how much shit it was buried in. All that mattered was finding directions to the pipeline and figuring out how to tap it.

Outside, the heat shimmered off Zagreb’s red-tiled roofs like ripples of lava. There was another city famous for its ancient ochre, orange, and red roof tiles. Dubrovnik.

“Julius, tell me. That weekend place of yours near Samobor. How private is it?”

“How private? If you want somewhere to hide a herd of elephants, it’s pretty useful,” Strumbić said.

“Have you got a three-hundred-metre clearing there?”

“Three hundred? The meadow at the top of the hill’s probably that. Maybe a bit less. I never measured. Why?”

“What about your place near Dubrovnik?”

“Šipan?”

“Yes. How quiet is that?”

“What do you mean, ‘how quiet’? You can hear the fucking birds and the waves. Sometimes an airplane passes overhead.”

“That’s not what I meant. Are there many tourists?”

“You get the occasional yacht in Šipan harbour and sometimes you get a few Germans on a day trip from Dubrovnik, but the island’s too far for most tourists and there aren’t many attractions.”

“How far is it by ferry?”

“About an hour.”

“Oh,” della Torre said. A near miss, but too far.

“But the right way to do it is to take a boat across the strait to a village on the mainland and then drive down.”

“How long’s that take?”

“My motorboat and car and I’m driving? Then it’s ten minutes for the crossing and a quarter of an hour down to Dubrovnik. You can usually get a fisherman to run you over from either side of the channel, takes about fifteen minutes that way. I hope your sudden interest in my affairs means that you’ve had a change of heart about me.”

“How big’s the place? How many does it sleep?”

“Are we negotiating a summer rental? It’s not a palace, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s one of those old sea captain’s houses, but done up. Four bedrooms in the main house and another couple in the courtyard.”

Della Torre looked in wonder at the cop. It wasn’t just luck that Strumbić had something handy in the countryside near Zagreb and something off the Dubrovnik coast. He had properties scattered across the whole of Croatia and as far afield as London. And not a penny of them mortgaged. It wasn’t ordinary corruption that had made Strumbić rich. Otherwise half the police force would be doing as well. It was the sort of entrepreneurial corruption that would have made Strumbić a rich man anywhere, in any age.

“Can I have use of your weekend cottage?” della Torre said. “Tomorrow or the day after? And maybe the Šipan house? I’m sure our American friends will come to some financial arrangement.”

“Always money with you, Gringo. Tell you what. Why don’t I come out to Samobor with you. I’ll have a chat with our American friends. See what they think. Maybe I’ll go down to Šipan with you. You know, show you how things work. In case there are problems with the boiler. And maybe along the way, I’ll do a bit of affidavit signing.”

Della Torre almost admitted he wasn’t going anywhere. That he was just making arrangements on behalf of the Americans. A dogsbody. But he didn’t.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Strumbić got out of the chair by the window and headed for the door.

“Gringo, I think I’m going to enjoy working with you.”

Anzulović
didn’t come back until late in the day. Anyone else gone that long without explanation, and della Torre would have figured him for an alcoholic. Not Anzulović.

“Good movie?” della Torre asked when his former boss popped his head into the room.

“Escapist crap. I find Hollywood most depressing when they give me what I think I want.”

“I won’t ask what you saw. Won’t mean anything to me.”

“Never mind, it’s only playing for another week. As if the movie wasn’t bad enough, I had to tear a strip off those cretins downstairs to get in.”

“You managed?”

“Course I managed. Threatened to shoot them. Try it.”

Anzulović sat down on a plastic chair next to della Torre.

“I’m sorry,” della Torre said.

“About what?”

“About getting promoted. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’ve done and I don’t want it. I don’t want to have the same rank as you. Frankly, I prefer the buck to stop with you.”

“Well, you’ve got it. And don’t be sorry. I have a feeling I’ll need friends with a bit of clout around here as long as Horvat’s around.”

“Not to mention Kakav,” said della Torre.

“Forget about Kakav. He may be a reptile, but he also has a reptile’s brain. As long as you grab him just behind the head, he can’t bite. Smack his forehead down hard on the edge of a table and he’s quiet for a while,” Anzulović said. “No, Horvat’s the dangerous one. Funny thing is, more to you than me. He has high hopes for you, whereas I know he doesn’t like me much. Probably because I was a friend of Rejkart’s. But maybe because of the Dispatcher.”

The name chilled della Torre’s blood.

“I thought the old man had crawled back into his hole.”

“So did I. But when all the rest of life is wiped out, he and the cockroaches will be left.”

“I don’t understand it. Is he friends with Horvat? Does he still want me dead?” Della Torre rested his chin on his hand and contemplated the indestructible rubber plant in the corner of the room.

“I don’t know, Gringo. Though I’ll tell you what I think. I think the Dispatcher was doing tricks for Belgrade. And now he’s doing them for the Croat government. He doesn’t know any more than we do how this whole thing is going to turn out, and he wants to make sure he’s covered on both sides.”

“But why make the public appearance?”

“It wasn’t too public. Just enough to show us that he has friends in high places, in case we get ideas. He’ll have been talking to Horvat anyway. He may be ancient and he may be poison, but he knows a lot. Politicians value his survival skills. Maybe Horvat talked to him about getting to know the Americans. The old man knew plenty about Tito’s diplomatic shenanigans, playing one side against the other. Half the time Tito didn’t trust his own foreign ministry people, thought they were all spies for somebody else, had his translator run the show for him. I’m sure the Dispatcher helped out as well.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Of course I know a lot about it. When you disappeared to London, I was the one who dug around. And I was the one who went to ask the old man why he wanted my friend dead.”

“I didn’t know that,” della Torre said, surprised and grateful for Anzulović and feeling even more miserable that he was losing some of the older man’s protection now that he was no longer his junior.

“Well, you do now. A thank-you and a Lucky Strike might be in order.”

“Thank you,” della Torre said, handing his pack over to Anzulović. “Now what?”

“I suggest you do what the Americans want. Horvat might be running things now and the Dispatcher might be pulling the strings, but the Dispatcher’s old. And Horvat . . . well, Horvats come and go. Americans are forever.” Anzulović gave della Torre a wry smile. “Fetching, that redhead of yours. How is it that you keep landing them? Irena, Grace Kelly in London, and now Rita Hayworth.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. What did she want?”

“Djilas. The Montenegrin.”

Anzulović sat up. “And what does she want with the Montenegrin?”

“She says she wants to talk to him. About
UDBA
wetworks operations in the States.”

“Just to talk?”

“That’s what she says.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No. I mean, not that he’d take a phone call from her. He won’t take one from me. He’s sensitive that way.”

“So she wants to see him. For a chat.”

“That’s what she says. To clarify some things not in their files.”

“He won’t come here.” Anzulović blew smoke through his thatch of nostril hair. He was clean-shaven otherwise, though he could have woven himself a fine moustache and sideburns from the foliage growing out of his nose and ears.

“That’s what I told her. Wants to meet him in Dubrovnik.”

“Will he go there?”

“I doubt it.”

“So what do you think our new-found American friends want with him?”

“I don’t know,” della Torre said with a shrug. “Maybe it is just to talk to him. But in Washington.”

“Or Aviano,” Anzulović said, referring to the American air force base north of Venice.

“Or there.”

Both men had smoked their cigarettes down to the filter and dropped them into a cracked tea saucer.

“Whatever they want, I’m going with them,” della Torre said. “Djilas may have done unmentionable things, but as far as I know he did them within the letter of Yugoslav law. If the Americans have a beef with anyone, it’s with the presidency.”

“The hangman’s friend.”

“No, but I’m not going to let him stand as some sort of sacrificial lamb to win the hand of American friendship.”

“Forever the lawyer,” Anzulović said. “Anything else new?”

“Strumbić wants to be involved.”

Anzulović let out a laugh from deep in the diaphragm, an honest, infectious laugh that della Torre hadn’t heard in what seemed like a lifetime.

“The Americans are welcome to him. Let him loose on them. He’ll give them a real taste of the Balkans.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Why not? Strumbić is the most honest crook any of us will ever meet. And he’s a smart guy. It would do you good to have somebody that canny by your side. And we now know that in a pinch he’s not going to shoot you in the back. Had plenty of opportunity to do that already. Might not step in to save you, but at least he’s not going to be standing on your head when you’re under water.”

“That’s encouraging. I’m going to be shot and drowned. Only not by Strumbić.”

“You’ve already been shot.”

“Thanks. That cheers me up.”

“I’m serious, Gringo. He may not be your closest friend, but he can be a useful ally. So if you can, let him play along. And who knows, you might be able to get him to sign the affidavit.”