“Says if either had a sidearm there’d have been bullets fired, that’s how mad they were.”
“Did Ion hear any of the argument?”
“He and quite a few others started down the road to watch. But mostly it was in English, with some Bosnian at times. He remembers Boldo saying to Attila, ‘When generals steal they are heroes, and when Gypsies steal they are thieves.’”
Ion added something then at which Goos drew back. He was clearly asking Ion to repeat it.
“Ion also recalls Boldo saying to Attila, ‘You said we should steal these weapons.’”
I took a second.
“And how did Attila respond?”
Ion took the time to light his cigarette, then made the shooting gesture again with his thumb and his forefinger.
“And what’s the conclusion to this argument?” I asked.
“Attila gives a bunch of orders. Boldo is all sulky. Attila is standing there, like a mom over a kid, while Boldo gets out his acetylene torch and starts parting out one of the trucks.”
“Chopping it?”
“Yay, they get done with a couple and put the pieces back in the Cave and call it a day.”
I asked Goos, “Do you understand what was up with Attila?”
“Nary a clue.”
“Okay.”
“As soon as Attila is gone, Boldo starts mocking her, how no dyke is gonna be telling him what to do. Eventually, Boldo slinks off to town. Usually does some dirty business in the clubs outside Tuzla, them that will let a Gypsy in.”
Goos turned back to Ion to listen.
“Right,” Goos said. “Next morning this pimply bogan, kid maybe twenty, druggie-looking, gray teeth from meth, shows up, so much cash it doesn’t fit in one pocket. Ion gets called back down to the Cave, and he and several other blokes load up two of the covered cargo trucks that haven’t been chopped, with a hundred assault weapons, body armor, ammo, RPGs, mortars. Very big score for Boldo. About 40,000 keim.” Roughly $20,000 American. “Boldo is going to deliver all that after dark.”
“Did Ion make the delivery?” I asked.
In reply, Ion was emphatic with Goos.
“No. For that, Boldo sent three of his regulars who helped him boost cars, including our friend Ferko. Ion and Ferko were mates in those days, so Ion heard about this from Ferko afterwards. Apparently the trucks and weapons went to the wrecked part of Doboj that took a lot of hits while the Serbs were driving out everyone else.
“Now Ion here doesn’t know exactly what Ferko heard or saw, but Ferko, when he comes back he’s all ropeable and gets into it with Boldo. Boldo puts a pistol on Ferko in the end to shut him up. Afterwards, Ferko is still spewin, tells Ion that Boldo is dealing with Satan and this all is never gonna come good: Between NATO and the Bosnians, every person in town who so much as looked at those weapons is gonna be at the bottom of a dungeon somewhere. Made enough of an impression on Ion that he didn’t go back down there to the Cave again.”
“And when is this exactly, Goos?”
“Could only guess, Boom, but maybe April 1.”
“Two weeks before the firefight with Kajevic?”
“I’m guessing, yeah.” Goos shook with Ion, while Goos waved in a woman he introduced as Florica. Her arm was held close to her body. A tiny cramped hand, dark and skeletal, protruded from her sleeve. This had to be Sinfi’s sister. She was much shorter than Sinfi and quite round, wearing a long skirt and head scarf. She was a smiler, though, and instantly appealing. Ion continued lurking in the background.
Goos asked her to repeat what he’d heard from her before.
“About three weeks later—” Goos said.
“April 20?”
“Thereabouts. A couple soldiers show up in Barupra from Republika Srpska. Boldo, you know, he’s on commercial terms with many of the local gendarmes, and she thinks these two are here for the same reason, but no, these two tell Boldo in front of Florica and half the camp that they have solid info that Laza Kajevic intends to kill every greasy Gypsy in the place for dobbing him in to NATO.”
“And how did Boldo react?”
Unbidden, Ion moved back into the frame to act out the scene between Boldo and the soldiers, falling to his knees with his hands joined in prayer.
“Boldo is swearing that’s a lie. He gets two of his children and, on their lives, says he did no such thing. No one in Barupra is such a dill as to speak against Kajevic.”
“But someone in Barupra did exactly that, right? Informed?”
“Bloody oath, Boom. You and I missed a lot of this story, but we got that right a while ago. One of the Roma told NATO where Kajevic was.”
“Like maybe Ferko?”
“How I’m thinking.”
“And what’s the reaction in Barupra?”
“Panic, Boom. Kajevic, you might have noticed, cunning as a dunny rat. He doesn’t threaten anybody who can run and hide. This way he gets a giggle out of putting a knife to their throats. Truth is they’re refugees already. These folks have nowhere to go and no way to get there. They can’t ask NATO for protection, because NATO and the Americans would lock up half the village for stealing the weapons in the first place. All the trucks are either sold or chopped by now.”
“And what does Boldo say to this threat?”
Goos put the question to Florica.
“Boldo is all like, No worries. The soldiers believed him, he says, that he never told NATO. Besides, if they ever see Kajevic’s Tigers coming, they’ve got five thousand weapons down in the Cave and can defend themselves. In the meantime, a different family will stand sentry every night, just in case.”
“Boldo hasn’t sold the rest of those guns yet?”
“No no. Seems like Attila warned him off that. Florica here says some people in Barupra wanted Boldo to hand out weapons to every family, but he wasn’t hearing that.”
Ion offered a sardonic interjection with a bitter smile.
“Ion here thinks Boldo was afraid if he handed out rifles, someone in town would shoot him and bring the body to the Bosnian Army as proof that Kajevic didn’t need to kill anyone else. Boldo, for all of that, he started in sleeping with his AK.”
The scene around Goos, especially Ion’s theatrics, had begun to attract a small crowd, mostly kids. Naturally, some of the children began to stick their faces in front of Goos’s camera, and both Ion and he had to shoo them away. Florica actually swatted one of the boys in the back of the head, not a serious blow but enough to make a point.
“And where are we in time now, Goos?”
“Well, we’ve got to be in the last week in April 2004, because a few nights later, Ion and Florica say they woke up to find armed Chetniks going house to house in the village.”
“What happened to the sentries?”
Goos asked Ion. I could make out the word ‘Ferko’ in his response.
“Ferko was the sentry?” I asked.
“Ferko and his sons and his sons-in-law.”
Ion rattled on again for a minute. “He says,” said Goos, “that was the last they heard tell of Ferko until about a month ago when he showed up here again. There’s to be a kris in a week or two—you know, the Gypsy court—to decide whether to expel him. Ferko is saying he saved all of their lives. And they’re thinking he sold all of them out.”
“Any opinions on that, Goos?”
“Well, we know Ferko more or less assumed Boldo’s business.”
I took a second to ponder Ferko, who was still not coming into focus. I’d never sensed in him the kind of guile these manipulations with the Americans required.