“And do you know if Yugoslavian-made trucks were ever used in the motor pools?” I was thinking of what Ferko had said in his testimony.
“Not for certain. But most of the frontline equipment, which was US manufacture, had already been moved to Iraq. NATO had seized thousands of vehicles from the various combatant forces. So if some were repurposed, I wouldn’t be surprised. Again, Attila will know.”
“She’s been very helpful so far. I have you to thank for that.”
Merry shook his head resolutely. “Not me,” he said.
“Well, when she picked me up in Sarajevo she said you’d asked her to assist us.”
Merry reclined with a small, skeptical smile.
“With Attila, you always have to bear in mind that there’s an improvisational side to her character. She called me the morning after we met. She knew you were on the way and asked if I had any idea what you were looking for. I spoke well of you—solid guy, that sort of thing—and I might have said there was no reason not to assist you. You’ve met Attila, so you understand. She wants to know everyone’s business.”
I smiled. “She’s very loyal to you.”
“I appreciate that. And so far as I was concerned, she was indispensable. Do you know the saying, ‘Civilians think about strategy, but generals think about logistics’?”
I’d never heard that.
“Well it’s a deep truth,” said Merriwell. “She is truly a logistical genius. No matter how many moving parts had to be coordinated, she could do it. She was more capable than any officer I had in QC. I actually talked about sending her to OTS, but she wasn’t interested while women were excluded from combat. And the truth is that someone as unusual as Attila got a lot less scrutiny as a noncom. But I was a much better commander having her to rely on.”
“She doesn’t think many of your peers would have been as welcoming.”
“Probably not. Her lifestyle was not typical for the Army, especially at that time. But soldiers can be very pragmatic when their lives are at stake. On task, Attila was exceptional.”
“A great soldier?”
“I’d say very good.” I wasn’t surprised that Merry talked about Attila more cold-bloodedly than she did about him. For her, Merriwell occupied that idealized role of mentor and savior. For him, she was a valued cog in a large machine. “She was outstanding when she was at a distance from her commanders and could function with some independence. On the other hand, she was a ridiculous busybody who refused to accept need-to-know limitations. And she has less talent at taking orders. Commands she disagreed with received a very idiosyncratic interpretation. Frankly, I was relieved when she became a civilian employee. I got the benefits of all her abilities, but none of the phone calls and telexes asking me what the hell she was doing now. But she’ll have your truck logs, I’m sure, and will be able to answer your questions. Apparently you’re headed back to Bosnia?”
“Word travels fast.” In preparation, Goos had gotten hold of Attila to secure laborers. Obviously she was Merriwell’s source.
I had our letter to NATO out on the small walnut table where we were seated and ticked through the remaining items.
“Duty rosters? Mess reports? Sick bay?”
“Help yourself.” Merriwell shoved a couple hundred pages between us.
“This is one day?”
“Two actually. You asked for April 27 and 28.”
Goos had correctly assayed the nature of armies and recordkeeping. The first thing I noticed, when I started thumbing through, was that the name of every soldier had been blacked out. I’m sure the look I gave Merry was not kindly.
“I don’t recall agreeing to expurgated records,” I said.
“I believe the agreement was that you’d get whatever the supreme commander was willing to provide. And the supreme commander is not serving up the heads of any soldiers on a silver plate. If there was a massacre—”
“It’s not much of an ‘if,’ Merry, looking at these photographs.”
“If that is what happened—and I remain hopeful of other explanations—then there was a chain of command. And at the top of that chain is where responsibility lies, not with privates and PFCs who were following orders and probably didn’t realize what was going to occur until it happened. Boom, this is what you’re getting.”
“We’ll have to talk about it back at the Court.”
“Our position won’t change,” he answered.
I had no doubt that removing names had been demanded by the Defense Department. And despite my rigid pose, I knew that after months of his net searches of Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube, Goos had assembled a good list of many of the personnel at Eagle. Complete duty rosters would have been far better, but the key remained finding a former soldier willing to correspond with us.
The pages in my hands were a maze of black and white, columns of names and units, weapons and language training, assignments and dates on duty. There were pages labeled Combat Support Battle Roster and sign-in sheets from the mess for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There were also stacks of sheets that showed, beside the obscured names, the officers’ and enlisted men’s units and duties for the day. I focused there.
When I reached the records of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, First Battalion, I had something. Against the captain’s report for Charlie Company, I matched assignments with the leave column. Every soldier identified as being part of the Second Platoon had been relieved of duty on the second day, April 28.
I could tell that Merriwell was not happy once I’d pieced that together.
“Is that an ordinary development—an entire platoon on leave?” I asked.
“There might be reasons,” said Merriwell.
“General, I said ‘ordinary.’” I meant to sound testy.
“For a single day, I would not regard it as ordinary.”
I went back to the captain’s report, counting the platoon members with the metal button on the top of my pen. There were thirty-four lines where the names were blacked out. Ferko said some ‘Chetniks’ entered Barupra on foot, the rest in the trucks. The numbers seemed right.
“And who was the captain for the company, and the lieutenant for this platoon?”
Merriwell shook his head with his lips sealed.
I made a face.
“Boom, don’t be greedy,” he said with some exasperation. “You have far, far more information than you did an hour ago.”
I left the table with a heavy sigh, but came back with some of the food the caterer had placed in the fridge. Merriwell and I each had small helpings of chicken salad and a can of soda. In the meantime, he latched the strap over his case.
I asked if I could hitch a ride with him to the airport. I was more than five hours early for my first plane, but I had to make my way from LaGuardia to JFK in New York and didn’t mind getting started on that now. At JFK, I’d find an Internet connection and get some work done. I grabbed my suitcase and joined Merry on the leather bench in the rear of an old Lincoln sedan. As we traveled, I rebooked for a 10 a.m. flight to LGA, then Merriwell and I talked about baseball and the season’s surprises: A-Rod’s play was steady so far. More incredibly, the Trappers were winning. By long experience, I was trying to contain my optimism.
“Can I go back to business and ask about one more thing?” I said when we were still a few minutes away from the TriCities airport.
“You can ask.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t believe that the people in Barupra were murdered in reprisal for setting up your troops for ambush by Kajevic.”
“Because that’s not what happened.”
“Explain.”