I nodded in slow wonder. Goos was something.
His last suggestion was the entire NATO file concerning the effort to capture Kajevic in Doboj, everything from US Army Intelligence to operational plans beforehand and the investigative reports in the aftermath: ballistic results, investigators’ summaries, even the autopsies. This was the one item on which he and I at first disagreed. If Army Intelligence was anything like the intelligence units I’d dealt with at the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, they’d be adamant about not releasing any information for fear that even a decade later it would compromise techniques or sources. On the other hand, requesting these items would give us room to relent if we got into negotiations. All we really required was records that would show how the US had come to learn of Kajevic’s whereabouts and whether there were any later suspicions of a setup, plus all information about the trucks the Roma had stolen from Attila.
As Goos and I were finishing up, my cell pinged. It was a text message from Esma.
In a meeting in London. Just felt the last little goopy bit of you come sliding out of me.
I sat there in a visible blush, a state I hadn’t experienced since my early teens.
I had known from the time Merriwell had advanced the idea of going to NATO for records that my bosses—Badu and Akemi—might be, in the end, a bigger obstacle than the US Army. Caution was a way of life at the Court. The leaden bureaucracy of the ICC, so foreign from the freewheeling atmosphere of the prosecutor’s office I had worked in before, had only one consolation: It was essential. Without a permanent constituency, the Court’s sole insulation from the inevitable controversies was to maintain rigid procedural regularity, even though I often felt I was being asked to chase bad guys in a fashion as mannered as an equestrian routine. The rest of the week, my time was consumed by meetings with the heads of the Office of the Prosecutor’s three divisions—Investigation, Prosecution, and Complementarity—concerning the document request. No one questioned my legal analysis. The referral document from the Bosnians, with its wax seal and blue-and-yellow ribbons, gave the Court the right to acquire any record that the government of BiH was legally entitled to. But my colleagues remained reluctant, particularly because this maneuver was such a clear end-run around US law. I found the Complementarity people—who were basically the diplomats—particularly vexing. They were rule worshippers who sometimes seemed as if they’d be perfectly happy if the Court never prosecuted anybody again, as long as we avoided any flaps.
The ultimate meeting with the division heads and coordinators took place in Badu’s office. I kept my eye on the old man throughout. Badu chuckled and nodded and groaned in his graceful way, imparting nothing that indicated that he understood in any depth what had been said. I was beginning to realize that Badu’s clueless manner insulated him from everyone outside the Court—and within—seeking to influence him. Near the end of the meeting, Badu said in his beautiful accent, “I have an old chum, Lord Gowen, who is the British ambassador to NATO. I am thinkin to geef him a coal.” My initial reaction was panic, fearing Badu could irretrievably screw things up, but after a second I realized that this might be an adroit move. If the other leading nations in NATO—the Brits, the French, the Germans, who were all also members of the Court—acknowledged the legality of our document request in advance, the Americans would have a much harder time resisting.
Within a day, Ambassador Gowen had encouraged Badu to proceed. NATO’s supreme commander at the moment was another Brit who, by the standard of other soldiers, was something of a supporter of the Court, and who signaled he would not stand in the way. Badu was careful to get the backing of the full OTP executive committee before I sent the formal document request to NATO. We all knew it was likely to provoke an explosive American response.
Back from Bosnia, I began to settle into a routine. On the mornings I didn’t call Will or Pete, I would wake an hour later and linger with my coffee over the New York Times online. After that, I often phoned my sister, Marla, for a few minutes of the harmless chatter we’d shared across a lifetime. I was reaching her at about 2 a.m. in Boston, while she sat up in bed, answering e-mails, clipping articles from the day’s newspapers to send to her kids, and reading the latest novel for her book club. The lights were burning while her husband, Jer, an orthopod, slept soundly beside her.
I got to the office by 8:30, ahead of many people, and was out by 5:30. I ate dinner in one of the cafés near the apartment and continued making my way through the pile of books I’d shipped to The Hague. Currently, I was rereading John Fowles, The Magus.
The day our document request was finally sent to NATO HQ in Belgium, I left the office a little early. It was the first fair weather I’d seen in The Hague. The solemn winter sky had broken into blue and a southern wind gentled the air. For a week now, the new vitality I’d acquired at the Blue Lamp had stimulated a yearning for exercise, of which I’d had next to none in the last few months. My landlady had offered me an old bicycle of her husband’s, which was part of the herd locked inside the front door, and I contemplated a ride now, but I still didn’t know the city and with my poor sense of direction was afraid of getting lost in some dead zone without cell reception.
When I came in, Narawanda was home early, too, probably also inspired by the weather. She was stretching in the living room for a run, her heel perched on the back of the sofa. It was the first time I’d seen her in shorts, and given the modesty with which we lived, I felt as if I’d walked in on her at an inappropriate moment.
I hustled toward the stairs, then regained myself and circled back.
“How would it be if I followed you for a little while?” I asked. “I’d just like to see your route. I promise I won’t hold you up. But I’d love to get back into running.”
She pondered that, almost as if I’d proposed cutting my rent in half, but she finally produced a tiny smile and nodded.
My plan was to run beside her as long as I could, then walk back. Our initial pace was halting as we dodged through the crowded little streets near the flat. But she soon led me on a quicker route, down the leafy esplanade on Lange Voorhout, past the monolithic US Embassy, which looked like a bomb shelter, and then eventually into The Hague’s vast park, Haagse Bos.
Based on our experience to date, I didn’t expect her to be talkative, but I asked politely about her husband’s visit.
“Nice,” she answered, which seemed a bit of an understatement given the vigor of the bed-knocking. “Lewis talked all the time about how much he loves New York, how wonderful it has been to be back there.” Her English was accurate, if occasionally somewhat stilted, and spoken with a Dutch accent—the rolled r’s and long o’s and guttural g’s—spiced with a little of the rising pitches of Java.
“And you?” I asked. “Do you love New York?”
“To visit? So exciting. To live? So difficult. It is not for me. I am accustomed to The Hague.” It felt like we had quickly reached a conversational impasse, but after a moment, she asked several questions about my trip. Her pace was much faster now, and I found every word an effort, but I answered expansively, in hopes of finally having some genuine interaction with her. I talked about my sons, and then BIH, providing a brief travelogue without going into details of the investigation.