In 1992, Kajevic had stood before the Bosnian parliament and basically threatened genocide of Bosnian Muslims if Bosnia voted for independence from Yugoslavia, as it ultimately did. For the next three years, Kajevic did his utmost to make good on his dark promise. The Yugoslav National Army and the Serb paramilitaries, allied with roving gangs of thugs, shelled and shot, raped and burned, and laid mines in all areas not populated by Serbs. Ultimately, in Srebrenica, eight thousand captured Muslim men and boys were summarily executed on Kajevic’s orders. After Dayton, in 1996, he was charged at the Yugoslav Tribunal. He’d been on the run ever since, becoming the most wanted man in Europe.
In late March 2004, US Army Intelligence received word that Kajevic and his band of two dozen bodyguards had taken refuge in a shattered portion of Doboj, which by virtue of ethnic cleansing had become a Serb enclave near Tuzla. He was more or less hiding under the Americans’ noses.
According to the accounts I read, Kajevic was supported by a secret network throughout Serbia and Bosnia that operated like the Ku Klux Klan in the US decades ago. He was guarded by ex–Arkan Tigers, the most reviled and feared of the Chetnik paramilitaries. In order to provide for Kajevic, the Tigers had evolved into a crime gang that smuggled gasoline and drugs and sex slaves, and also, reputedly, carried out paid assassinations for Russian mobsters.
For General Layton Merriwell, the capture of Kajevic would have been the ultimate emblem of the success of NATO’s peacemaking efforts in Bosnia. The operation was planned carefully, and the remaining Special Forces troops in country—who had spearheaded the apprehension of many fugitives—were summoned.
On April 10, a perimeter force surrounded the abandoned tenement where Kajevic was said to be hiding, while two squads entered the ground floor from different doors. They were inside for no more than a few seconds when at least two rocket-propelled grenades, fired from above, lit up the building. Snipers waiting on adjoining rooftops fired on the Special Forces soldiers as they fled.
The Serbian ambush left four American troops dead and eight others wounded. Never actually sighted, Kajevic and his Arkan bodyguards were presumed to have escaped in one of two stolen US Army trucks seen speeding from the scene.
These deaths, the only US combat fatalities in more than eight years in Bosnia, made a sour end to Merriwell’s time there, and front-page news at home. In perhaps the most famous quote about the episode, an American NCO snarled into a network camera, “We didn’t come here to die for these [bleep]ing people.”
After three days, I’d read every article and blog post I could find online concerning Kajevic’s escape, and I’d also enlisted the aid of the Court’s research librarians. There was no mention of ‘Roma’ or ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Barupra’ in anything written about the firefight.
On Tuesday the following week, Goos came into my office with a piece of paper. I had taken over Olivier’s space a few days before, although I was still getting accustomed to its barren feel. The furnishing was spare—a round-nose pedestal computer console of blond wood adhered to a bank of white laminate cabinetry. The Dutch, as it turned out, frowned on personal displays in public space, and the off-white walls held nothing but a colored map of Sierra Leone that Olivier had taped up by its corners, and which I left, as a low-rent rebellion against monotony. It was a far cry from the Wall of Respect I had at DeWitt Royster, with the photos of three different presidents shaking my hand, the courtroom sketches of my most famous trials, and various important documents—diplomas, bar admissions, and my US Attorney’s Letters Patent—in expensive leather frames.
“A sheila I know over at the Yugoslav,” Goos said, meaning a woman, “defense lawyer, says she and her husband might have a room to let for a couple of months.” In idle hours, I’d been looking at apartments online, but most required a multiyear lease. A short-term rental would let me escape the monk’s cell I was confined in while I got a feel for The Hague, before making a longer commitment.
After work, Goos accompanied me on the Sprinter back to the center of town. Following a short walk, we found the building, its entry jammed with bikes locked to the radiator.
The two-story flat was tidy and dustless, sparely furnished with older modern pieces that looked as if they might have been inherited. My potential landlady was named Narawanda Logan, Indonesian by heritage but a resident of The Hague most of her life. She was tiny and narrow as a bird, with raven bangs and large eyeglasses, round black frames that seemed to cover half of her face. Based on the dates when she said she’d done a graduate law degree at NYU, I figured her for her late thirties, although she had the kind of dainty looks that could lead her to be mistaken for someone much younger.
Her husband, Lew, was an American whom she’d met in grad school. Recently, the international aid organization he worked for had posted him to Manhattan for temporary duties promised to last no more than six months. But the dizzy rents in New York were stretching the Logans’ finances and they’d decided to let an empty bedroom. The room was upstairs and small by US standards, albeit spacious compared to my hotel. It had the large windows that are typical of the Dutch in their quest for light, and its own tiny powder room, which had been carved out of a closet years ago as an accommodation for an elderly relative.
Mrs. Logan said she woke early and returned late, and that use of the kitchen would be largely mine because she never cooked. The relative privacy of the entire arrangement was instantly appealing. Beyond all that, the location was choice, only a couple blocks off Frederikstraat, ‘the Fred,’ with its fancy shops and nice cafés. Knowing myself, I realized that if I couldn’t just stumble out the door to find diversion, I’d never leave the apartment.
Goos had told me the rent—€550 a month—was a bargain—and I said yes at once and moved in the next evening.
On Monday, March 23, word came that the Bosnians had reaffirmed the referral of the investigation to the ICC. After eleven years, less one month, a criminal inquiry into the massacre at Barupra could begin.
I was not surprised that Roger, who knew all, called me late in the day.
“So I read you won your hearing.”
“It’s a little hard to claim victory, Rog, where there’s no one on the other side.”
“Whatever. Now that you’re investigating, how would you like to come to DC to have a conversation with Layton Merriwell?”
“General Merriwell?”
“He’s willing to talk to you one-on-one.”
“About the case?”
“No, about raising dwarf ponies. Of course about your case. He’s also been reading about it.” The Court’s order had produced the first publicity in the US about Barupra, a small article in the back pages of the New York Times. The paper had mentioned that the massacre had occurred in an area under US Army control. I could understand why that would have caught the attention of the NATO supreme commander at the time. “The general wants you to hear his point of view,” Rog said. “Tell you what he knows. Which is next to nothing.”
I nearly asked Roger what was in this for General Merriwell, but that was peering straight into the mouth of the gift horse. Instead, after hanging up, I sat at my desk trying to answer the question on my own. I didn’t doubt that Roger was my friend—he had flown fourteen hours to get to the funeral of my mother, who had cooked him countless meals during law school, and he was far more attentive to me than almost anyone else had been after I decided to leave Ellen. Yet he subscribed, like many guys, probably including me, to a view of friendship that barred no holds in competition. On the squash court, Roger had virtually maimed me through the years, running me over, driving the squash ball into my ass at 80 mph, and—usually when he was behind—swinging wide enough to strike me with his racket. All in the game, he’d say.
So I tried to fathom the game now. Roger was a public servant of the United States. Accordingly, whatever Layton Merriwell had to say was going to serve American interests, which, naturally, were in absolving US military forces.
I walked down the hall to Goos.