The Abomination Page 27

  “Perhaps. But what if it was more than that – what if it was the priest himself who reported that Ricci was leaky?” He shook his head. “If your American’s right, you’re up against an extraordinary alliance. You think those people are just going to stand by and watch while you dig up the evidence?”

  She said stubbornly, “It’s got to be done.”

  He stood up. “Kat . . . Please. I’ve messed everything up. My marriage, this investigation . . . The one thing I won’t add to that list is you. Leave the others to pursue this madness if they want to. I don’t care about them.”

  She couldn’t think what to say.

  “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “Just because. . .” He took a breath. “The decision I made, to go back to my wife . . . I had to. I hope you understand that. It’s my duty. But my heart’s with you.”

  “You wanted me off the investigation. Even before today.”

  “I can’t ever work with you, Kat. But that’s because of how I feel, not because my feelings have changed.”

  She was still turning this over in her mind when he kissed her. For a moment she let him, and for a moment more she kissed him back, remembering how good it was, how protected and safe she felt in his arms. Then she pushed him away.

  “This isn’t fair, Aldo. You’re doing bad things and saying they’re for good reasons. If I was a man, you wouldn’t be trying to protect me like this. And that’s why I have to ignore you. I’m going to Croatia to find Soraya Kovačević. Then I’m coming back here to find her daughter. I’ll keep you informed of my progress, but I won’t let you get in my way.”

  Fifty-three

  AS WELL AS the paper-strewn drawing room at Ca’ Barbo, and the almost deserted office at Campo San Zaccaria, there was another operations room that had been set up to deal with the case.

  It was small and neat, and it occupied a glass-walled office four thousand miles away, on the fourth floor of an anonymous building in Norfolk, Virginia.

  Despite the fact that none of the people in the room were on the payroll of the US Department of Defense, most wore US combat fatigues, complete with badges of rank.

  “Their next move is Croatia,” a sergeant reported, easing off his headphones and speaking over his shoulder. “They mean to go and find the mother.”

  “Excellent.” The comment came from the only man in the room not in uniform. His dark suit and crisp white shirt were, however, pressed with military precision. “We have good friends in Croatia, for obvious reasons. When do they fly?”

  “Hermes’ understanding is that they’ll be driving.”

  “So we find the mother before they do,” one of the men in uniform suggested.

  “That would be a short-term answer,” the man in the suit said thoughtfully. “I think we should aim to find a more lasting solution. This has taken up enough of our attention already.”

  The other men waited for orders. If their opinion was wanted, it would be asked for.

  “We’ll ask our friends in the Croatian Army to organise a field exercise,” the man in the suit said at last. “An emergency drill to test their combat readiness, as per the terms of our on-going training contract with them. Fortunately the Croatian media is still reasonably grateful to their military. A small but tragic accident involving two foreign nationals will simply be taken as proof that more such training is needed.”

  “Crixus is keen no harm comes to his agent.”

  The man in the dark suit nodded. “All the more reason that it looks like an accident, then. Crixus will get over it.”

  Fifty-four

  THEY SET OFF before dawn the following day, driving northeast from Venice in Holly’s tiny car, with the mountains ahead of them and the sea on their right. At Palmanova, the very tip of the Adriatic, the road arced east and then south, following the great curve of the Laguna di Marano. Few tourists came to these eerily empty marshlands, fewer still at first light, but the road was full of thundering lorries with Slavic names on their sides.

  When they’d left Venice, the interior of Holly’s car had been military-neat. But the floor was soon strewn with Kat’s chocolate wrappers and empty drinks cans. She saw Holly glance at them and twitch, but with her hands on the wheel there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it.

  Beyond Trieste they passed into tiny Slovenia. Although part of the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia had been a member of the EU since 2004, and as a result it seemed little different to being in Italy. Half an hour later, though, they crossed into Croatia, and it was as if they were driving into a different century as well as a different country. In the fields, farmers with gnarled, leathery faces slapped at the haunches of oxen yoked to ploughs. Women wore headscarves and jerkins made of some thick, indistinguishable material. Yet some of the houses had satellite dishes on their walls, and they occasionally glimpsed BMWs and other luxury cars.

  It felt like a country still being born: a country that hadn’t finished changing.

  Holly said calmly, “I think we’ve got company. A dark blue Audi saloon. Italian plates.”

  Kat glanced in the passenger mirror. “Shall we try to shake them?”

  “You bet.”

  “Might be tricky, given that they’re driving a faster car.”

  “Actually,” Holly said, “in car chases, you always assume the other guy has a faster car.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “That you don’t try to outrace them.” As she spoke she was filtering off the carriageway. The other car followed, maintaining its distance. “What we’re looking for is a nice patch of suburbia. Just like this, in fact.” Abruptly, without using her indicators, she took a right. Immediately she’d done so, she accelerated, then allowed her speed to drop again as the Audi turned into the street behind them.

  “And another right,” she said, turning again. Again she accelerated briefly before slowing as the other car appeared. She’d now opened up a hundred yard lead.

  The street ended at a junction. The lights were red. Without stopping or indicating, Holly jumped the light and turned right into the traffic. There was a blaring of horns, and she waved. “Sorry.” Fifty yards later she took a left.

  “I can’t see them,” Kat said, looking back.

  “Even so. . .” Once again she took a series of turns without indicating, this time all to the left.

  “I get it,” Kat said admiringly. “You’re counting the left turns, so that you always come back to the direction in which you were first travelling. Then you do the same with the rights.”

  “Exactly. It’s the automobile equivalent of spinning someone round and round with a blindfold on. Most people simply forget to count. And once they have to make more than one fifty-fifty call on which way to follow us, the odds on them guessing right go down exponentially.”

  She turned right once more. “Now we’re heading back out of town, on a road roughly parallel to the one we came in on. Hopefully, they’ll still be wasting time looking for us back there.”

  “Very neat. But I do have one question.”

  “Which is?”

  “You learnt this in the US Army, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “What happens if they were trained the exact same way?”

  “Let’s hope they weren’t paying attention that day.”

  They got back on the main road and continued south. Eventually they turned off and began to climb up into the hills. Almost immediately, they began to see signs of damage left behind by the war. Nearly every village still contained at least one house that had been ruined. In some cases, shell holes pockmarked their façades.

  “We’re entering the Krajina region now. This was one of the most disputed areas,” Holly said. “Originally it was part of Bosnia. The Serbs took it, then the Bosnians took it back, then the Serbs got it again, and finally the Croats took it from both of them.”

  Kat shivered. “It still has a bad feel, doesn’t it?” She noticed that, whereas in areas they’d driven through previously t
he locals had looked at the car quite openly, here no one would meet their eyes.

  They drove onwards, towards the coast. “I think we just crossed the old front line,” Holly reported. There was nothing to mark the spot except for a concrete water tower that had been shelled from both directions until parts of it had almost turned to lace. Now it loomed over the road like a modernist sculpture, metal rods poking out of the crumbling concrete, too solid to demolish but too expensive to repair.

  Brezic was about fifteen miles beyond. As they drove, Holly pointed out features of the countryside – sightlines, cover, patches of high terrain. She could read the landscape tactically in a way that was completely unfamiliar to Kat. Listening to her, it was as if the last fifteen years had rolled away and the war was still being fought, the ghosts of the soldiers and their victims still patrolling these country lanes.

  It was an impression only reinforced when they had to give way at a junction to a convoy of troop lorries. The soldiers in the back of the trucks stared down at the two women with the hungry but resigned look of men who knew it would be a long time before they got any female company.

  “Must be an exercise,” Holly commented.

  Eventually they came to Brezic. It was little bigger than a village, with a small central square, a grocer, a café-cum-bar and a church. As they parked, a few old men glanced up from the tables outside the café. By the time the two women had walked over, they had all shuffled off.

  “Seems they’re not keen on strangers,” Holly said.

  Inside the café they found a man washing glasses. Kat took out the picture of Melina Kovačević and said in Italian, “We’re looking for this girl’s mother, Soraya Kovačević. Do you know her?”

  The man barely glanced at the photo before shaking his head. Kat tried again in English. This time he didn’t respond at all.

  A woman carrying a mop and a bucket came in. When Kat tried to show her the photograph the woman pushed it away forcibly, unleashing a torrent of Croatian that, for all neither Kat nor Holly could understand it, clearly meant they should get out. As the woman gesticulated, Kat noticed the stećak tattoos on her forearm.

  “This may be more difficult than we anticipated,” she said.

  “Let’s try the church.”

  As they crossed the square another truck full of soldiers thundered through. It was towing a small trailer-mounted mortar. “American-made weapons,” Holly commented. “New ones, too. That’s a 4.2 inch A85, same as we use.”

  “I guess arming a whole new country must be a contract worth winning.”

  In the church they found a young priest carefully melting together the stubs of old altar candles. “Good afternoon,” Kat said politely. “Do you speak any Italian? English?”

  “English, yes, a little. My name is Father Pavic. How can I help?” he said with a smile.

  “We’re looking for this woman’s mother.” Kat produced the picture. “We’d also appreciate speaking to anyone who knew this woman.” She added Jelena Babić’s photograph.

  The young priest studied them. “I don’t know either of them. But I’ve only been here four years. Would you like to come into the office? It may be that Father Brkic knows more.”

  He led them to a small back room, where an elderly priest sat with his feet near an ancient electric fire, a blanket over his knees. The young man spoke to him respectfully in Croatian, then handed him the pictures.

  Father Brkic spoke briefly but emphatically, his gnarled old finger stabbing the photograph of Melina Kovačević.

  “He knows this girl,” Father Pavic reported. “She grew up in an orphanage just outside the village. But she was a bad girl. She was told to leave because the nuns couldn’t stop her drinking and talking to men.”

  “And the woman?” Kat pointed to Jelena Babić’s picture.

  The old man hesitated. He recognises her, Kat thought.

  “Ne.” The old priest handed it back to the younger man. Almost surreptitiously, he crossed himself.

  “Well, thank you anyway. We’d appreciate directions to the orphanage.”

  As they were leaving, the older priest suddenly said something else. His eyes were fastened on the fire, but Kat could tell from the way the younger priest stopped and listened that it related to Holly and her.

  “Reci im da treba biti oprezan. Ljudi ovdje ne vole pričati o ratu.”

  “He says you should be careful. People around here are still very sensitive about the war,” Father Pavic translated.

  “Please thank him for his help,” Kat said. She thought to herself and how exactly did Father Brkic know those photographs had anything to do with the war?

  In the square, parked a little distance away from their own car but with a good view of all the exit roads, was a dark blue Audi.

  Fifty-five

  THEY DROVE THE mile or so to the orphanage. There was no opportunity on the tiny roads to repeat the manoeuvres that had shaken off their tail before, and when they arrived at the nondescript institution the Audi was still following.

  They were shown into an office, where they were met by a stern-looking woman of about sixty. She was wearing a grey habit and white wimple, together with the heavy pectoral cross of a Mother Superior. Once again Kat explained why they were there and produced the photographs. The other woman nodded.

  “Yes, Melina was one of our children here,” she said in good Italian. “Unfortunately when she reached the age of fifteen she became unruly. Eventually we had no choice but to expel her.”

  “The thing that puzzles me,” Kat said, “is that she wasn’t actually an orphan. So far as we know, her mother is still alive. Why did you take her in the first place?”

  The Mother Superior hesitated. “It’s true her mother is alive, but she was also unmarried. In this country it’s still hard for a woman to raise a child in that situation. Often, such children are given to the Church, to be brought up in a more morally appropriate environment.”

  Kat chose not to challenge that last remark. “So she had no contact with her natural mother at all?”

  “To begin with her mother stayed away, but then she got in touch. It was after her mother made contact, in fact, that Melina started to become unruly. I think the girl had built up in her mind an idea of what her parents might be like, and where she herself had come from . . . It would have been kinder, in my opinion, to leave her in ignorance. But unfortunately we don’t have the right to prevent such meetings. And her mother thought she deserved to know the true story.” She touched the picture of Jelena Babić. “I believe it was Jelena Babić who put that idea in her head.”

  “You knew Jelena too?” Kat said, surprised.

  “Oh, yes. She used to do charitable work with the children here. She was a good person, but her judgements weren’t always sound. We had to ask her to leave, too, after—” She stopped.

  “After you discovered that she believed herself to be a priest,” Kat said quietly.

  The Mother Superior sighed. “Please understand. I myself was called by God – I know how powerful that sense of vocation can be. But Jelena wanted more. And she was convinced that her ordination, as she insisted on calling it, was valid, despite the fact that His Holiness expressly ruled that it couldn’t be.

  “I told her that no good would come of speaking out. But I think she felt that what had happened to her and to Melina’s mother during the war somehow made a difference to their position; that if only people knew about it they’d understand. That was when she decided Soraya should tell her daughter how she came to be born.”

  “As the result of rape.”

  The Mother Superior gave them a sharp look and folded her hands in her lap. “We had a great many children here, the same age as Melina, who came from similarly difficult backgrounds. We thought it best not to go into detail about the circumstances that had brought them into the world. How could we? At what age would they be able to cope with such a thing? How could we even know for certain which among them were the resu
lt of these crimes and which were not? It seemed fairer not to dwell on the past. Once Melina knew, of course, she told the others . . . Some became angry, some didn’t want to talk about it. It was a very divisive period.”

  “Which you resolved by getting rid of her.”

  Steel glinted in the Mother Superior’s grey eyes. “As I said, it was her own behaviour that forced us to do that. She had plenty of warnings.”

  “Did you know she became a prostitute?”

  The Mother Superior sucked in her breath sharply. “I didn’t, no. How terrible. I will pray for her.”

  “We believe she was forced into it against her will, by traffickers. Perhaps because she had no one else to turn to after she left here.”

  “We had no choice,” the Mother Superior said firmly.

  “What’s your understanding of what happened in the rape camp?” Kat asked curiously. “What was it exactly that Jelena and Soraya told Melina?”

  The Mother Superior shook her head. “You would have to talk to Soraya about that, not me.”

  “She still lives round here?”

  “Yes. About fifteen miles away, in a village called Krisk. There’s one thing you should know, though. Don’t look for Soraya Kovačević. That’s a Croat surname we gave Melina to help her fit in. Ask for Soraya Imamović. She’s a Bosniak.”

  As they got back in the car, the Audi reappeared.

  “We’re going to have to lose them,” Holly commented. “It could be dangerous for Soraya if we lead them to her.”

  “Understood.”

  They drove away, following a circuitous route. Kat said, “It’s crazy, isn’t it? The name Kovačević is acceptable, but the name Imamović marks you out as some kind of alien.”

  Holly nodded. “What was that phrase in the title of Doherty’s paper? ‘Libidinal frenzy’? I can see what he means – it’s like everyone went psycho for a few years, and when they woke up discovered they’d been raping and killing their next-door neighbours.”