“And Srebrenica?” I asked. “Over a few days, more than eight thousand unarmed Muslim men and boys were gunned down one by one, President Kajevic.”
Bozic now raised a hand to forbid an answer, and Kajevic responded despite him.
“I was not there, Mr. Ten Boom. And your version of what happened is nothing like what I have heard. But even pretending what you say is true, how were these Bosniaks unarmed? Most were captured as part of a military column. And if released, the next day they would have taken up guns and resumed slaughtering Christians. You know the saying, Mr. Ten Boom, that history is made by the victors? Do you?”
“Yes,” I finally answered.
“So is justice. How many of the war criminals your Court prosecutes were the winners in the wars they were fighting? The Protestant West, the Americans, call me a criminal so I am a criminal. That is a matter of power, not justice. The only true war crime is losing.”
“We will prosecute Americans, if that is your point, Mr. Kajevic.”
“No you will not,” he answered. “And if you truly believe that, you are quite dim.”
He was smart. I had been prepared for that. And not without his point.
“Let us talk about Barupra, President Kajevic.” Beside his client, Bozic nodded sagely.
Kajevic again denied that he, or those he commanded, had any role in annihilating the people of Barupra, adding, with his inescapable air of superiority, “I would not be here, were there any basis to believe that.”
That answer begged a question that had gotten quite a bit of airtime in the prosecutorial councils at the Court in the last week. Why in the world was Kajevic sitting for questions? Leaving aside his curiosity about the men who’d inadvertently spearheaded his arrest, it seemed inevitable that he wanted to blame the Americans, whom he despised for intervening in a war he was sure he was about to win.
“And do you have any information, either direct observation or what you have been told, about what might have become of those people at Barupra?”
“I heard rumors,” he said.
“And when did you hear those rumors?”
“Several weeks after. May, even June of 2004.”
“And what were the rumors?”
“That the Americans had come in the dead of night, set off explosives, and the Roma were gone.”
“Did you ever talk to anyone who claimed to have been present or in the vicinity when that happened?”
He turned his head several times, meaning no. “I don’t believe so. I was far away by the end of April.”
“Where were you?”
Bozic immediately waved a hand. Kajevic again answered despite his lawyer.
“I was nowhere near Tuzla, Mr. Ten Boom, where the Americans were searching for me in every attic and cellar, every culvert and sewer.”
“And what did you make of those rumors about the Roma? Did they seem credible?”
“Of course. The Americans believe they are invincible. And so they were full of rage that a so-called war criminal had succeeded in killing and wounding so many of them.”
“But why blame the Roma of Barupra?”
“Because they had provided the weapons we used in our defense.” Kajevic angled his face to look at us, calm and supreme. “Surely after all your investigating, you knew that?”
When I did not respond, Kajevic beamed. He had remarkably good teeth, straight and white, for a man who had come of age with Tito-era dentistry. Beside me, Goos had stopped tapping away on his laptop. We’d had the Eureka we came hoping for: The Roma had provided the arms Kajevic used to shoot the Americans.
“No, of course, you don’t know that,” said Kajevic. “Because the Americans want to hide the fact that they were killed and wounded with weapons stolen from under their noses. It makes them look pathetic and inept.” Kajevic uttered a hearty stage laugh, then tapped Bozic with the back of his hand. He remarked to Bozic in Serbo-Croatian. I looked discreetly at Goos’s pad, where he had written the translation, much as I would have guessed: ‘I told you so.’
“You understand,” Kajevic said, “that the Americans and NATO stripped us of weapons whenever they could during their occupation. Old men were beaten and deprived of their shotguns or the sidearms they had used in World War II. The NATO force left us toothless, while the Bosniaks built immense armories for the next war. Altogether, in the years after Dayton, NATO collected eight hundred fifty thousand small arms. Did you know that?”
I nodded.
“Then perhaps you know what happened to those weapons?”
“I’m sure you can tell me.”
“No, I cannot,” he answered. “Only a small portion. Here is what I know. Late in the winter of 2004, the American general, Layton Merriwell, the NATO supreme commander, decided he could accomplish two goals at once by transporting most of these weapons out of Bosnia. About 500,000 light arms and munitions. Do you know where he sent them?”
“No,” I said.
“Iraq?” Goos asked.
“Of course, Iraq,” said Kajevic. “To equip the police and defense forces, all the Sunnis the Americans had disarmed the year before. Everyone who had served in the Iraqi Army was familiar only with Soviet-type small arms, like these. So General Merriwell went about collecting weapons from all over Bosnia to ship to Iraq. Brilliant, yes?”
He was being sardonic. But it was actually a wise plan—get the guns out of Bosnia, where sooner or later they would have gone astray and been employed to disrupt the peace, while saving taxpayers the expense of arming and training the Iraqi forces with American equipment. It sounded like the combination of tactical and political genius that was part of Merriwell’s legend.
“And what became of that plan?”
“You should ask your countrymen. I am told they grow very silent when that question is raised. Surely I don’t know the answer. Except of course about six trucks full of light arms. That was stolen by the Gypsies.”
Attila and I by now had spoken several times about the Gypsies stealing her convoy. What she’d failed to mention every time was that the trucks were full of weapons. That, apparently, was the big classified secret, although the goal, at least as Kajevic told the story, seemed to be avoiding embarrassment rather than promoting national security.
At first blush, I was inclined to blame Attila for leading me to believe that trucks were the only equipment the Roma had sold to Kajevic. Merriwell, too, had left me with that impression. I would have to review things carefully later, but after a second, I suspected that if I’d had a tape recording I’d find that both Merry and Attila simply had not corrected my errant deductions.
“And by ‘Gypsies,’ you mean the Roma from Barupra?”
“Who else? It is characteristic of the Americans’ moral arrogance that they disregarded all warnings about employing Gypsies. And suffered the loss of their vehicles and weapons as a result.”
“And you bought both? Trucks and guns?”
“Two trucks. Ammunition. One hundred assault rifles and other light arms.”
“Grenade launchers?”
“Yes, yes. Those. Mortars. The armaments that proved so lethal to the Americans as we fired down from the adjoining buildings.” He was trying to be stone-faced and factual, but a mean-spirited smile was tempting his lips.
“You didn’t have weapons already?”
“Unfortunately, we had departed in haste from our prior refuge, making it impossible to travel armed. Once we were settled in Doboj, we needed to resupply.”
“And how did you find the Roma to buy this materiel?”
“My nephew was in charge of this resupply effort. Do you have nephews, Mr. Ten Boom?”
“I do.”
“And what kind of men are they?”
“Very fine. Very different. One is a medical student, the other works as a juggler and teacher. But they are both outstanding young men. My sister’s sons.”