The Threat

The hulking armored car Larreinaga called a “transporter” was painted a white that looked dingy at close range. Its cramped interior stank of sweat and cheese and diesel fuel, but Dan felt more secure with steel around him. He clicked open a firing port as they growled and lurched into a city that had undergone a siege almost as long as that of Stalingrad.

The liaison officer told him he was going to have to be alert in the open. It wouldn’t hurt to beware of windows too, especially facing south. The city was surrounded, and everyone in it was a target. Bridges, crossroads, streets that weren’t masked by buildings, were areas of increased risk. If you had to cross them nobody would laugh if you broke into a jog. The residents had put up signs in the most dangerous areas. He should obey them and cooperate if someone grabbed him to pull him back into cover. “Remember, if you can see a mountain, whoever’s on that mountain can see you,” Larreinaga said.

The signs were daubed on plywood or plastic sheets or chalked on the walls. In English, French, and what must be Bosnian. The streets were pocked with shellbursts. Some of the black ripped-out stars had been filled with gravel. Others hadn’t. Every window had been blown out or shattered. The streets were lined with shipping containers, burned-out buses, wrecked cars, sections of levered-up sidewalk. Two old men huddled over a chess table close under high-school lockers stacked with sandbags. Dan realized they were cover from snipers.

They passed a huge nineteenth-century building, smoke trails like black eyebrows above the empty windows. “That’s from the shelling three years back,” Buddy said. “These people have been through it. War One, War Two, this is War Three for them. That corner — see the bridge? That’s where Gavrilo Princip shot the duke and the duchess. Where World War I started.”

Some streets farther on, the transporter slowed. It wove between giant jacks of rusty I-beams and stopped at a checkpoint. Troops with automatic rifles exchanged shouts with the driver. The transmission whined.

Headquarters was a multistory office building that hadn’t been spared fragment damage. It was ringed with concertina wire, sandbags, parked transporters, and stacks of rusty containers decorated with large-caliber-bullet holes. Women hoed onions in garden patches no bigger than bedsheets. A desert tan French tank aimed its main gun down the street.

“Keep moving, remember,” Buddy said, and they went inside, Dan careful to keep as much metal and concrete between him and the mountain as he could.

* * *

The United Nations Military Observers headquarters held Swedes, Turks, Italians, French, Portuguese, British, Belgians, Japanese, Dutch. The UNMOs wore blue berets and all seemed very busy. Larreinaga did what he could, but Dan didn’t get much attention. Shunted from office to office, he ended up on the fourth floor. The office was on the north, the safe side, and he could look out over the city.

“Commander Lenson. I trust you had a fast and safe trip in. Cigarette?” said a slight, poised officer whose name tag said B FEVRIER.

“Non, merci.” Dan declined the proffered Gauloises bleues.

“We were, I very much regret to say, not prepared for your arrival.”

He’d thought about how he should handle this, and decided on low-key first. He also thought it might help to try it in French. “Je regrette beaucoup d’entendre cela, mon colonel. J’espere que ce sera possible de visiter la site des evenements recentes, en poursuivant les orders de ma gouvernement.”

Fevrier made a half-concealed grimace, as if tasting a bad peanut. “You will excuse me, but perhaps we should conduct our business in English. I have taken the opportunity of calling the chief of staff, Brigadier Nikolai, about your request. I am sorry to say that though it is our desire to help, it is not possible at present to transport anyone to Srebrenica.” He pronounced it Sebreneetsa. “We are as you may have observed in the middle of a war. A confused and ugly little conflict. It is not a time for fact-finding missions.”

“Nevertheless I must insist. The president wants the situation clarified. It would be very desirable if transport and a small escort—”

Fevrier inclined his head politely, as if being introduced to the dignitary Dan had just invoked. He seemed to be listening. A moment later a heavy, close-by crack rattled the windows. Dan stopped speaking, interrupted not by his courteous interlocutor but by the shell.