Looking down from the edge of the former refugee camp, I saw that the site of the Rejka mine was a hive. Heavy equipment had been inched perilously down the narrow dirt road. Two bright yellow backhoes had climbed up the face of the Cave on their treads and were clawing into it. Goos had told me the night before that he had checked with Madame Professor Tchitchikov, who was confident that the original hollow in the rock formation, the result of stripping out the vein of coal, would not collapse while the new rubble was cleared. After easing off the rock pile, the backhoes emptied their buckets into the beds of two red articulated dump trucks, which then wove down to the valley floor, depositing the contents through their liftgate onto huge green tarpaulins. There, a cadre of workers in orange hazmat suits was sorting every rock individually. Much farther from me, I could see a collection of blackish objects—bones, I guessed—that had been segregated onto smaller blue tarps. Other workers in orange were photographing what lay there.
As usual, I avoided focusing on the remains. It was not easy to see that far anyway. The dust being raised by the digging rode on the air, a brownish fog with an acrid odor and bitter taste. Everyone was wearing white face masks, including the NATO troops who were positioned at the corners of the site, with rifles across their bodies.
My NATO driver went through an elaborate back–and-forth on his radio. Apparently, the mining road was barricaded by a huge construction crane whose operator couldn’t be located. I assured everybody that there was no reason I couldn’t walk. I had worn jeans and hiking shoes and I tromped down to the site of the dig, while my two bodyguards watched from above. More than half of the Cave appeared to have been excavated now, leaving the outer edge of original overhang visible, a darker brown than the surrounding rock.
A dump truck driver was leaning out of her cab when I got that far.
“Beel?” she called. She motioned to her passenger seat and ferried me down to the valley floor, where Goos in his white mask was waiting. He pulled it up to his forehead and took a swig of water from a bottle in his hand. The flesh the mask had covered was several shades lighter than the rest of his face.
I asked how he felt, but he backhanded the question like a fly.
“And what about the digging?” I asked.
“I’d say we’re about two-thirds of the way. Come have a look.”
I followed him toward the blue tarps, a walk of several hundred feet. I wrestled my phobia, but when I finally dared look up, I could see that what had been laid out was not bones.
I stopped dead, grabbing Goos’s arm. “Guns?” I asked.
“Yay, weapons,” he said. “And bits of trucks.”
On each tarp, there were a couple of hundred small arms laid side by side, a virtual armory that, all told, covered an area nearly the size of a football field. There were the green tubes of antitank weapons, shoulder-fired missiles and their launchers, grenades, carbines, sniper rifles, submachine guns and pistols, drab mortars with their attached tripods, and, most frequently, Zastavas. Here and there the workers had also laid out lines of helmets and body armor. The most distant tarps held cases of ammunition and bands of machine gun bullets.
“Gonna be around five thousand guns, I’d say,” Goos told me. “Today, getting into the rear of the Cave, we’ve been digging up some truck parts, whole gamut from fenders through engine blocks. Like maybe they had some kind of small warehouse back in there.”
“And how many bodies?”
“So far as I reckon, nil,” said Goos. His blue eyes were narrowed in the dust but fixed to me to await my reaction. “Late yesterday, we found a couple of bones and were barracking about for a few minutes, quiet like, not that it would be anything to celebrate. Turned out to belong to a fox. So far, those are the only biologic remains.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ve got two blokes putting an eye on every speck of dust. It’s the same protocol we used near Srebrenica, Boom. We’ve found the usual kids’ junk—wrappers, bottles, a busted beach ball. But no clothing, no bones. We’re spraying with Luminol at random, but no blood either. Only decent discovery is here.” He led me over to another blue sheet, where pieces of electronics had been isolated. They were dust-covered and usually no more than tidbits of wire and semiconductors and metal, but on a corner, about a dozen square old cell phones, each the size of a dinner biscuit, were segregated, largely intact.
“It’s the devil’s own dance getting into these things anymore, but at NFI they may be able to do it. Might be some photos, messages, something to help identify the people who were here. Hardest part will be finding chargers.”
“And that’s the best we’ve got?”
“How I reckon, Boom, this here, the Cave, was some kind of arms depot. The weapons are mostly Yugoslav made, with a few old Soviet items here and there. They’ve got marks engraved on the components. We’ll need to check with some military types, but I think that signifies that the stuff was in NATO custody at some point.”
“Are you thinking NATO buried these weapons here?”
“Truth told, Boom, I haven’t even begun to think about why these arms are here. Still stuffed that there aren’t any human remains.”
“Could the bodies turn up?”
Goos tilted his face up at the mine.
“Well, like I say, Boom, we still have a third of the way to go, but how I figure, fitting four hundred people in a space of that size, we should have found something already. My guess, we’ve got Buckley’s chance any bones will turn up.”
Like Goos, I looked to the Cave, where the powerful engine of the crane had just fired to life, farting black smoke. The bitter dust in the air was already gathering at the back of my throat and there was some irritation in my lungs. But my principal reaction was emotional, somewhat dizzied that this was what the last months had amounted to.
“So Ferko was a stone liar?” I asked. “It was all bullshit?” Even now, I’d expected to discover some truthful elements in his testimony, but Goos solemnly turned his head one way, then the other.
“Sheer rort,” he answered.
General Moen and Colonel Ruehl journeyed to Tuzla for dinner that night. Ruehl’s arm remained in the cast he’d be wearing for several more weeks, so an aide intervened whenever he needed to cut something on his plate.
The dinner was meant to be a celebration. Goos and I weren’t really in the mood, and as it turned out, the NATO people weren’t either. It was a good thing for the world that Laza Kajevic had been captured, and an achievement for the soldiers who’d been hunting for him, but even the thought of Kajevic and his crimes was enough to dampen emotions.
Goos brought several of the weapons we’d recovered to dinner in a canvas bag, and both Ruehl and General Moen examined the contents, discreetly enough that only a few of the diners took notice. Neither of them was familiar with the markings, but Moen’s aide had been here in 2004 and confirmed that the laser engraving was typical of what NATO, especially the American forces, had done when they seized weapons stocks in Bosnia.
While we were eating dessert, General Moen asked if we’d heard any reports in The Hague about how Kajevic was adapting to confinement. I said only that I’d been told he did not care for Dutch food.
On Thursday morning, I sat down for breakfast with Goos before I flew back to The Hague. Goos was staying on until the excavation was complete and all the arms and truck parts had been photographed. He preferred to bring everything he’d uncovered back to The Hague, but transporting weapons would require permits. Goos planned to go to Brussels on Sunday, to help Fien pack. With their youngest grandchild now school-age, Fien had decided to move to The Hague, at least for the rest of the summer, perhaps permanently.
“Told her I’d give the program another burl,” Goos said. He didn’t quite allow his eyes to meet mine.
I had noticed that he wasn’t drinking last night at dinner and was afraid he wasn’t feeling well, maybe from all the dust the exhumation had raised. I nodded now, just to show I had heard him. There was a lot of information in his last sentence.
“If it takes,” Goos said, “then I’ll have to give Kajevic his due.” I wasn’t sure whether Goos was referring to Kajevic’s insult, telling Goos he looked like a drunk, or the moment of reflection the Tigers had provided for us on the top of the water tank. It didn’t make much difference either way.
We shook hands, which wasn’t customary for us with our comings and goings, then I stood up to get ready to leave the Blue Lamp. We’d had some eventful times here.
31.
Fallacies—July 3–6