The Threat

For some reason the UN had put its headquarters for the whole Bosnian protection effort in a besieged city under shellfire. Sarajevo lay along a thin blue-and-white lace of river. On the final approach, Dan made out the Olympic stadium, left over from ’84. Housing blocks. A sizable downtown, with ten-story buildings. A haze of wood-smoke. Minarets, and church spires, and the needle-and-globe television towers you saw in Bahrain and Saudi. The turboprop, wings groaning and hold-downs rattling, sideslipped precipitously toward a strip that suddenly came into view between steep hillsides. The folded, rounded mountains didn’t look too different from those he’d grown up among. That was the creepiest thing of all, how much like home it looked.

The pilot came back and spoke to the Dutchman in Spanish. “Approach control has problems with the runway,” his seatmate told Dan. “Let me give you some advice. Wear your flak jacket whenever you’re in the open. Be aware of mines. Be especially alert around the cemeteries. They like to plant them there and get the people visiting their dead relatives.

“That’s a two-thousand-foot mountain,” the major added, pointing off to the south. “They’re not supposed to shoot, but we’ll still do evasive as we come in. If you look down, you’ll see something interesting.”

They roller-coastered past the mountain toward the shortest runway he’d ever seen. And there they were, tucked under the trees overlooking the city whose lights were sparkling on here and there down in the shadows of the hills. Artillery. Troops shading their eyes up at them. The drab green, knobby turrets of T-54s. Campfires. Tents. Pickup trucks with what looked like ZSU-44s in tow.

“JNA. Yugoslav Army,” the Dutchman said grimly as the fuselage bucked, throwing them together. They grappled like wrestlers, off balance. He pushed Dan away. “The fucking Serbs.”

* * *

Now and then during the trip, Dan had wondered darkly why Clayton wanted him

for this. Surely State or CIA could confirm a massacre. Blair was in the Philippines. So it couldn’t be that. Or could it? Sending the inconvenient husband off to vanish? Playing Captain What’s-his-name … Bathsheba’s husband … started with a U … to De Bari’s King David?

Or was he going over the cliff, into post-traumatic stress, disorientation, madness? He’d been told before he was prone to imagining more was going on than met the eye. On the other hand, in the China Sea, in the Caribbean, in D.C. years before, more had. Like the wisdom scrawled in the ship’s heads: Just because you were paranoid didn’t mean they weren’t out to get you.

Now he took slow, deep breaths as the landing gear shrieked on wet pavement. He tried to divert his apprehension by lacing the too-big boots tighter around two pairs of socks.

Uriah, he thought then, fear settling in his bowels like an impacted turd. The dutiful, unsuspecting Hittite. Who’d snapped off a salute, barked, “Aye aye, sir,” and marched off to Rabbah, never to return.

* * *

Sarajevo International looked like an airport in West Virginia that had been shelled and looted. Battered concrete-block buildings. Barbed wire. A rusty truck loaded with gravel. More gravel lay piled along the runway. Shell holes pocked the tarmac. The French seemed to be running things. At least there were French flags flying. The blue UN banner too. The plane emptied fast, blue-bereted noncoms shouting the troops out. A swarm of hungry-looking handlers clawed at the cargo. A forklift snarled away with the palleted stuff, trickling rice as it jolted over craters.

The mountains looked much higher than from the air. A turbulent river foamed along south of the airstrip. Past it a blue-gray escarpment towered like a barrier between worlds. It was capped with snow. Valleys opened to his left, to his right; ahead loomed an even more enormous peak, so high his neck flashed a twinge as he looked up at it. He remembered watching skiers tear down its flanks on television, years before.

“Let’s go,” said the Dutchman. “We need to get off this strip.”

Dan flinched. Ducking, he followed at a jog through air that was warmer than he’d expected toward the largest building. A huge black U and N were painted on its roof.

* * *

He sat nursing a paper cup of Nescafé in a cold office that smelled of piss with Captain Manuel “Buddy” Larreinaga, U.S. Army. The American liaison was dark and short, and his border twang sounded strange in the split heart of Eastern Europe. He and the Dutchman sat on opposite sides of the table in their different green-and-brown camo patterns and did not look at each other. Both smoked, though, and Dan’s eyes stung as they went over the route and what might ambush them along the way. He kept expecting the captain to ask exactly why Dan was here, but he never did. As if there was no point questioning anything from Higher.