“We aren’t going to have another conversation about classified material, are we, Boom?” He told me he was still plodding through the files regarding the efforts to capture Kajevic, but that virtually none of them were going to be released, for fear of compromising Special Forces techniques that were still in use. “But I will tell you explicitly that in my review, I have seen no reports even suggesting that the Gypsies conspired to lure our troops into a trap, nor frankly do I have any memory of hearing that at the time.”
“You won’t deny, General, will you, that it was the Roma who informed Army Intelligence of Kajevic’s whereabouts?”
“I won’t confirm it either.” He turned on the seat to face me. “I’m sorry, Boom, to sound racist, but Army Intelligence—and our Special Forces—knew better than to take Gypsies at their word or to completely depend on them. Assuming the Roma provided information, it would have been corroborated by days of surveillance. And the Roma had no role of any kind in the action, and no advance information about how or when we were going to go after Kajevic. Even if the Gypsies wanted to betray us—which would make no sense given how well we’d treated them—they didn’t know enough to do that.”
“Yet as we’ve already discussed, General, there is every appearance that Kajevic was aware you were coming.”
“I agree. But not because of anything the Gypsies knew. As I’ve explained, our forces couldn’t close off four square blocks in Doboj without informing the local authorities, all of Serb ethnicity. I’ve always assumed that was where the leak came from.”
When I was US Attorney, we engineered a number of big busts, dozens of federal agents in SWAT gear taking down drug kingpins and gang leaders. But we learned the hard way to be cautious with the Kindle County Unified Police Force. There was never any telling which cops were jumped in to the gangs or on a dealer’s pad. So our first call to the Force for backup wasn’t made until the battering ram was about to hit the door. Special Forces had to be even more circumspect than we were. Whatever they were obliged to tell the Bosnian Army or the local police would have been passed on far too late to allow Kajevic to set up the elaborate trap that had greeted the American soldiers.
“He had to have known earlier than that, General.”
“I take the point, Boom,” said Merriwell. “But if that’s true, we never established how that happened.”
“So what you’re saying, Merry, is that you know of no reason that Army elements were furious with the Roma?”
“On what basis do you think they were?”
“On the basis of a dozen photos you just showed me of those people being rounded up and driven to their deaths.”
Merriwell pouched up his thin mouth and his face went dark with irritation. It was the closest to angry I’d seen him, although I couldn’t tell if he was put out with my persistence, or with himself for not incorporating the implications of the evidence he’d turned over. He also might have been peeved by other thoughts he couldn’t share. After a second, he offered another determined toss of his head.
“Boom, I’ve done what I can to allow you to investigate this matter without interference. As you’ve told me before, that’s your job. So I haven’t asked anyone who served under me to explain these materials. But I will never stop believing in the men and women I commanded.”
I could see that we’d need the testimony of one of his soldiers before Merriwell accepted that there was an American role in the massacre. Until then, as he’d just acknowledged, he’d assume there were innocent explanations. We had reached the airport anyway.
I was flying from a different terminal than Merry, and the car dropped me first. The general rose from the limo to wish me well, fixing the center button on his suit coat while he stood on the pavement. Overall, I was impressed by how much stronger he seemed, more fit, and even, if it was possible, straighter. Despite his clear unhappiness as we were going over the NATO records, he otherwise seemed buoyed by a self-confidence that had been absent when I had first visited with him, although I wasn’t sure I liked him as much without that sad contemplative air.
I told him again how good he seemed.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Life is far better, even if a bit more complicated, but I have you to thank for the improvements, I believe. Your advice hit home.”
“Just timing. I didn’t say anything new.”
“And you?” he asked. “Roger seems to think you fell under the spell of the compelling Ms. Czarni.”
There was no point denying it.
“Well, Merry, I’ve learned how deeply a man can long to do something completely stupid.” I decided there was no polite way to tell him how often he’d crossed my mind in the process. “It’s over now.”
He studied me, squinting in the spring sun.
“I suppose, Boom, if it’s something you will still remember in your waning days, then it might not have been stupid at all.” Merriwell looked at his watch. “To be continued,” he said, and slid back into the car.
Merry’s last remark stayed with me as I entered the terminal. His personal observations had far more power for me than our back-and-forth about business. After clearing security, I called Esma’s New York cell and she picked up on the third ring. I told her that I would be going between airports and could hopscotch through Manhattan and meet for coffee around 1:30.
“I’m in court but I could beg for an early recess,” she said. “It’s golf season, so this judge is always happy for an afternoon off.” She said she was staying at the Carlyle.
“Is there a coffee shop near there?”
“Oh, Boom. Don’t be pedantic. You’re not going to leave me weeping in a Starbucks, are you?”
She told me to ask for ‘the Jahanbani apartment’ when I arrived.
No part of America ever seemed as impressively rich to me as the Upper East Side, because the fury of so much of Manhattan is subdued there, almost as if there were border guards posted somewhere in the Sixties, checking tax returns before anyone was admitted. The doorman at the Carlyle directed me to a separate entrance, where the receptionist called up to announce me.
Esma opened the door and fell on me. I turned my face away, but she still held me for quite some time. She was in her courtroom apparel, deliberately subdued, a loose royal-blue jumper without much of a waist. Her makeup was minimal and her bosk of hair had been tamed in a bun, giving her a schoolmarmish appearance. But the modest look was becoming.
Predictably, I found Esma residing in glamour in a two-bedroom apartment furnished with Francophile elegance. There were antiques in the style of Boulle with gilded decorations on rich woods, a gray velvet sofa with rolled arms, and windows a story and a half high with orange drapes. The artwork was nineteenth-century etchings and watercolors.
“Nice digs,” I remarked.
“Ah yes,” said Esma. “What lawyer doesn’t love rich clients? Madame Jahanbani is allowing me to stay here during the trial.”
She offered wine, and I settled for a glass of water from the tap as Esma sat a safe distance from me on the other side of the velvet sofa. She asked where I had been and I explained only that I’d been back in Kindle County to visit.
“Staying again with your ex-wife?” Her eyes were sharp.
“And her husband.”
“Ah, Bill. What you don’t see.”
Esma arranged herself a bit and folded her hands primly in her lap and rolled her lips into her mouth, preparing for launch.
“Where do I begin?” she said then. “I made a mistake, a terrible mistake. I assumed you would be pleased. That was a ridiculous misjudgment on my part, I admit that freely. I promise you, swear to you with my entire heart, that nothing like it will ever occur again. But to end our relationship over this is an even bigger mistake, Bill. I truly feel that way. We have an exceptional connection.”
“Esma, I feel ill-used. I couldn’t have been clearer. You were acting for the Roma cause. Not for my sake.”
“Not at all.” Her entire upper body quivered in disagreement. “Not at all.”
“Esma, this is exactly what I was afraid of from the start. That the roles would become confused.”
She sat calculating.
“So what is your theory, Bill? That I was using you to get information which I would then deploy to further the Roma cause, as you put it?”
“That’s a little coarser than I would have it.”
“But still a grain of truth?”