“I thought you were just saying that four hundred people couldn’t march through the circle of several US camps without our troops knowing and reporting something?”
“I was talking about a foreign military operation and an explosion, Mr. Ten Boom. Large movements among the civilian population, on the other hand, were common. In Bosnia in 2004, there was little work and dramatic shortages of food. People were out foraging for edibles or coal, collecting scrap iron, hunting. Not to mention thousands of refugees still returning home. A few hundred people going down the road might not have attracted much attention.”
“But, General, the people in Barupra lacked the physical means to go anywhere, other than on foot. Those Roma were living under plastic sheeting for the most part.”
“My memory, Mr. Ten Boom, is that a few of those Gypsies were known car thieves.”
“To move four hundred people, General, you’d have to steal dozens and dozens of vehicles, which would create big issues with the Bosnian police. Not to mention the fact that there is not one report of anyone in the world seeing or hearing from those people since that night eleven years ago.”
Merriwell sat back to study me. I took his silence, like mine a second ago, as a concession that I had the better arguments on this point.
“And finally, sir,” I said, “all these alternate theories fly in the face of something neither of us has mentioned yet: I have a witness, General, a man who lived in Barupra, who says that everyone there was sealed in that cave.”
“I realize that.”
“Have you read his testimony?”
“As it happens, I have. Roger sent it to me.” At the Court, I had heard nothing about any requests for a transcript, which meant Roger’s agency had copied the broadcast from the Internet. No surprise. Roger had been clear from the start that they were monitoring the case.
“Frankly, Mr. Ten Boom, I couldn’t comprehend why you were not on your feet screaming for the life of Jesus about what that witch of a judge was doing. There were only a handful of US airmen ever on the ground in Bosnia and they’d been gone for years.”
I explained that I thought Judge Gautam’s game had been to discredit me, more than the US. That was not, of course, something I cared to hear repeated, but I wanted to let my pants down a little with the general, in hopes that he might do the same. From his intent look, I took it that my reasoning made sense to him as a game theorist.
“But leaving the judge aside, General, are you telling me you weren’t impressed with the witness’s testimony?”
“You’ll forgive my lapse in political correctness, but I’ll share a lesson I’ve learned around the world: Gypsies lie, Mr. Ten Boom. It is not really lying to them. They have no written history. Instead, the past is constantly recreated to fit each moment’s needs. Furthermore, when they are dealing with us, it’s self-protective. Lying keeps the majority world at arm’s length.”
“I won’t quarrel with you on social anthropology, General. That’s not my field. I’m going to Barupra next week, but thus far this man seems very well corroborated.” I took some time to describe the photos and affidavits and seismic reports Esma had gathered originally. “That evidence, General, supports the claim of a massacre. And as you acknowledged before, it is very hard to believe that an explosion or a paramilitary operation could have occurred without American soldiers knowing. And inasmuch as no US troops reported anything to superiors, one reason might be because they were involved.”
I had realized as soon as Merriwell conceded that someone under his command would have to have known about Barupra that he had demonstrated why his lawyers told him not to speak to me. Some arguments, as they say in the courtroom, prove too much and end up serving the other side.
Turning the general’s point against him set him back. He stood to reach a silver carafe in the middle of the table. He poured water for both of us and adjusted each trouser leg before resuming his seat.
“How much do you know about the war in the Balkans, Mr. Ten Boom?”
I told him the truth, that my recent reading had left me astonished about how little I’d absorbed at the time.
“You were hardly the only one who failed to appreciate events,” the general answered. “Our allies in Europe initially viewed the fighting in Bosnia as no more than the continuation of ethnic rivalries that had been going on since the fourteenth century, when the Ottomans first entered this region. But what the Serbs were inflicting on the Muslims in Bosnia was nothing less than genocide, as intentional as the Nazis’ effort to exterminate the Jews, and, although blessedly of a much smaller scope, even more savage. Twenty thousand Bosnian women were sexually assaulted, many of them in rape camps aimed at impregnating them with Serbian children. In the rest of the five hundred concentration camps the Serbs operated—ten times as many as the Croats and Muslims combined—the inmates were systematically starved and worked to death. Not to mention the hundreds of mass executions that were carried out.
“All of that, Mr. Ten Boom, was happening less than six hundred miles from Dachau, on the same continent and in the same century, despite all our vows of ‘Never again.’ But horrible as that was, as slow as we were to see what was happening—despite the repeated alarms raised by your friend Roger, by the way, among a few others—the United States of America finally saw the truth, responded, and put a halt to the atrocities. Bosnia was the first actual military operation NATO ever engaged in. And it was a stunning success.
“We separated three warring ethnic groups. And, as important, we removed the means for them to start killing one another again. At the time Yugoslavia shattered, Marshal Tito had built the third largest army in Europe. We seized eight hundred fifty thousand weapons, most from paramilitaries and jihadists and vigilantes who were quite unhappy to surrender them, and we did it without fatalities. We also arrested twenty-nine war criminals, most of them Serbian but also a few Croats and Bosniaks and Kosovars wanted in The Hague.
“I look back with only two regrets. The biggest occurred on 9/11 when it was suddenly clear that we should have done far, far more to ballyhoo our salvation of the Bosniaks and Albanians throughout the Muslim world.
“Nevertheless, for those, like me, whose lives are dedicated to the belief that military force is also an instrument of peace, our role in the Balkans is a supreme moment.”
Merriwell had spoken with slow-fused passion. I’d listened without questions, both to be polite and also because I was certain I would get his point sooner or later.
“General, you’re not the kind of guy who needs a pat on the back, and least of all from me. So I wish I knew what you were trying to suggest.”
“I’m trying to give you a sense of the stakes involved in your investigation, Mr. Ten Boom.”
“Four hundred deaths gave me a sense of the stakes a while ago, General. And I know you’re not suggesting that because thousands of lives were saved, a few hundred murdered Gypsies don’t matter.”
“I surely am not. But there are consequences to your investigation, especially if these allegations gain more attention, which I hope you’ll bear in mind. Even a false accusation of this nature fortifies those who say we should save our tax money and stay home and let the world take care of itself. And that gratifies the many around the globe—the Russians, the Chinese, the Venezuelans, ISIS, Iran, and all the extremists of many stripes—who are very happy when we don’t project our power abroad.”
“I can tell you right now, General, I hope that thought never enters my mind.”
Merriwell recoiled visibly.
“My job in The Hague, General, is the same as it was fifteen years ago in Kindle County: Investigate crimes and prosecute when the evidence is strong and the violations of the law are serious. I indicted our Catholic archbishop for looting church coffers to support a child he’d fathered.”