The Threat

They sat in what seemed to be a combination café and tire-repair business. A gas lantern hissed on the table. They hadn’t been beaten, yet, but there’d been a lot of gun waving and yelling when the militia or paramilitaries or whatever they were, Serbs anyway, Zlata whispered, had pulled them over. They’d jerked them out and shaken them down, taking money, watches, press cards, and the maps. Then ordered them to follow their VW Golf. To this hamlet, this office smelling of rubber and glue and stale beer, the only light on in town. The guy on duty had made a phone call when his buddies pushed the captives in. Where they’d waited since, wrists lashed behind them with plastic zip-ties.

Until a balding man with a large head strode in, followed by two bigger men carrying Kalashnikovs. He snapped at the guards, who scurried to place chairs. He placed a pack of cigarettes on the table. Lit one. Then threw a pistol on the table too. He looked them over.

“They tell me you’re spies,” he opened. In English, for some reason. Dan was about to answer when Zlata said, “We’re journalists. Going to Belgrade.”

“Same thing. Where are you going in Belgrade?”

Jovo said something in Serbo-Croatian. The guy slapped his face so hard his head snapped back. Then put out a boot and kicked him off his chair. “Spies, journalists, same fuck-ing thing,” he said again. “Stay down there when I kick you. What paper you write for?”

“I’m with Tanjug,” Zlata said. “Your own news agency, you fool.”

“I don’t believe you. How about him?” He jerked his head at Dan. “He’s a fucking American, right? What is he doing with you?”

“He told me he was a Canadian.”

“Yeah, I’m American,” Dan said, just to clear it up. “I told her Canadian. You can let her go. Like she said, she’s on your side.”

“I’ll decide who’s on my side.” The bald guy smiled, and it wasn’t nice. “The Muslims are using journalists to get NATO to bomb us. What are you doing on this road?”

Dan said, trying to sound calm, “We’re trying to find out what happened in Srebrenica. We want to talk to Serbs, not just Muslims. Find out the truth. Too many rumors going around right now. And they don’t make the BSA, if that’s who you are, look good.”

The commander didn’t seem disturbed by the prospect of bad PR. “We’re fighting your battle,” he said. He tapped ash and pointed the cigarette at Dan. “You don’t understand. Or you’d rather look away. Serbia has been the front line before. Over the centuries. We stopped the fucking Turks here. Kept them out of Europe. Stopped the Nazis too. Well, the Dutch left. They didn’t have the yahyahs for the job. Another few weeks and we’ll have everything cleaned up. Then you won’t have to do anything but cry for the poor Muslims.”

One of the men outside came in. He placed something in front of the bald guy. Dan tensed as he saw they were his maps.

“Whose are these?” he said after a time.

Dan swallowed with a dry throat. “Mine.”

He felt the barrel of a Kalashnikov against his ear. Another, banging into his other temple.

“These are military maps. Why don’t you tell me the fucking truth now,” the man said gently. “Who are you spying for? It’s the Germans, isn’t it?”

“Come on, droozhe,” Zlata coaxed. “There are no spies here. We’re all on the same side here.”

But Big Head said there was somebody else who would want to make that decision himself.

* * *

They were on the road an hour this time, but blindfolded. So Dan couldn’t have said where they ended up. Only that when the blindfolds came off they were in another room, this one sweltering, heated by a hissing pressure stove. Now and then came the grunt of heavy motors outside, the crunch of tires on shattered brick and crumbling asphalt.

This door revealed at last an older man, heavy, gray-haired, with small, very pale blue eyes and the peaked eyebrows and slab cheeks you saw in the States in pictures of union leaders in the coalfields. He was in utilities, a soft hat, black leather gloves. A brandy smell came in with him. No gold on his uniform, but from the way the others sprang to their feet Dan figured him for a general. And from the way Zlata sucked in her breath, one she feared.

He seemed to be in a jovial mood, though. He boomed out Serbo-Croatian. She answered, forcing a bright voice. Then he gave an order. The soldiers jerked Zlata and Jovan up and pushed them out an exit Dan hadn’t noticed till then. Leaving him alone, facing the guy.

Who banged the table suddenly with his fist, and shifted to English. “Okay, I know who those two are. But I don’t know who you are”—glancing at Dan—“other than you’re an American traveling with Ustasha agents. You’re out here where the wolves fuck. You carry military maps and you say you want to see the Turks. So what do I do with you?”

“I’d say let us go,” Dan said. “Those two aren’t spies.”

“Maybe not. They’re still traitors. But what about you? To me you look like professional military. Yes? Maybe we are the same, you and me.”