I spent the next couple of days reading about the raid nearly eleven years earlier, on April 10, 2004, in which US forces under NATO command had failed to capture Laza Kajevic. By early 2004, the American troops were in their last days in Bosnia, because President Bush needed more boots in Iraq. In fact, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Layton Merriwell, who had gone on to become a figure of some note, if not for reasons he would have chosen, had already been appointed to lead the coalition forces in Baghdad and was on the verge of departure from Europe.

As for Kajevic, he was universally regarded these days as the motive force of the Bosnian carnage. In line with his epic self-conception, he presented a somewhat majestic figure, large and imposing, with a virtual monument of black hair, distinguished by a wide skunk stripe that might have been the work of a hairdresser. The coiffure swept across his forehead down to eye level, in the fashion of an old-time rock ’n’ roller, and was the subject of frequent comment since it remained utterly undisturbed no matter how vehemently he delivered his race-baiting speeches.

In 1992, Kajevic had stood before the Bosnian parliament and basically threatened genocide of Bosnian Muslims if Bosnia voted for independence from Yugoslavia, as it ultimately did. For the next three years, Kajevic did his utmost to make good on his dark promise. The Yugoslav National Army and the Serb paramilitaries, allied with roving gangs of thugs, shelled and shot, raped and burned, and laid mines in all areas not populated by Serbs. Ultimately, in Srebrenica, eight thousand captured Muslim men and boys were summarily executed on Kajevic’s orders. After Dayton, in 1996, he was charged at the Yugoslav Tribunal. He’d been on the run ever since, becoming the most wanted man in Europe.

In late March 2004, US Army Intelligence received word that Kajevic and his band of two dozen bodyguards had taken refuge in a shattered portion of Doboj, which by virtue of ethnic cleansing had become a Serb enclave near Tuzla. He was more or less hiding under the Americans’ noses.

According to the accounts I read, Kajevic was supported by a secret network throughout Serbia and Bosnia that operated like the Ku Klux Klan in the US decades ago. He was guarded by ex–Arkan Tigers, the most reviled and feared of the Chetnik paramilitaries. In order to provide for Kajevic, the Tigers had evolved into a crime gang that smuggled gasoline and drugs and sex slaves, and also, reputedly, carried out paid assassinations for Russian mobsters.

For General Layton Merriwell, the capture of Kajevic would have been the ultimate emblem of the success of NATO’s peacemaking efforts in Bosnia. The operation was planned carefully, and the remaining Special Forces troops in country—who had spearheaded the apprehension of many fugitives—were summoned.

On April 10, a perimeter force surrounded the abandoned tenement where Kajevic was said to be hiding, while two squads entered the ground floor from different doors. They were inside for no more than a few seconds when at least two rocket-propelled grenades, fired from above, lit up the building. Snipers waiting on adjoining rooftops fired on the Special Forces soldiers as they fled.

The Serbian ambush left four American troops dead and eight others wounded. Never actually sighted, Kajevic and his Arkan bodyguards were presumed to have escaped in one of two stolen US Army trucks seen speeding from the scene.

These deaths, the only US combat fatalities in more than eight years in Bosnia, made a sour end to Merriwell’s time there, and front-page news at home. In perhaps the most famous quote about the episode, an American NCO snarled into a network camera, “We didn’t come here to die for these [bleep]ing people.”

After three days, I’d read every article and blog post I could find online concerning Kajevic’s escape, and I’d also enlisted the aid of the Court’s research librarians. There was no mention of ‘Roma’ or ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Barupra’ in anything written about the firefight.

  

On Tuesday the following week, Goos came into my office with a piece of paper. I had taken over Olivier’s space a few days before, although I was still getting accustomed to its barren feel. The furnishing was spare—a round-nose pedestal computer console of blond wood adhered to a bank of white laminate cabinetry. The Dutch, as it turned out, frowned on personal displays in public space, and the off-white walls held nothing but a colored map of Sierra Leone that Olivier had taped up by its corners, and which I left, as a low-rent rebellion against monotony. It was a far cry from the Wall of Respect I had at DeWitt Royster, with the photos of three different presidents shaking my hand, the courtroom sketches of my most famous trials, and various important documents—diplomas, bar admissions, and my US Attorney’s Letters Patent—in expensive leather frames.

“A sheila I know over at the Yugoslav,” Goos said, meaning a woman, “defense lawyer, says she and her husband might have a room to let for a couple of months.” In idle hours, I’d been looking at apartments online, but most required a multiyear lease. A short-term rental would let me escape the monk’s cell I was confined in while I got a feel for The Hague, before making a longer commitment.

After work, Goos accompanied me on the Sprinter back to the center of town. Following a short walk, we found the building, its entry jammed with bikes locked to the radiator.

The two-story flat was tidy and dustless, sparely furnished with older modern pieces that looked as if they might have been inherited. My potential landlady was named Narawanda Logan, Indonesian by heritage but a resident of The Hague most of her life. She was tiny and narrow as a bird, with raven bangs and large eyeglasses, round black frames that seemed to cover half of her face. Based on the dates when she said she’d done a graduate law degree at NYU, I figured her for her late thirties, although she had the kind of dainty looks that could lead her to be mistaken for someone much younger.

Her husband, Lew, was an American whom she’d met in grad school. Recently, the international aid organization he worked for had posted him to Manhattan for temporary duties promised to last no more than six months. But the dizzy rents in New York were stretching the Logans’ finances and they’d decided to let an empty bedroom. The room was upstairs and small by US standards, albeit spacious compared to my hotel. It had the large windows that are typical of the Dutch in their quest for light, and its own tiny powder room, which had been carved out of a closet years ago as an accommodation for an elderly relative.

Mrs. Logan said she woke early and returned late, and that use of the kitchen would be largely mine because she never cooked. The relative privacy of the entire arrangement was instantly appealing. Beyond all that, the location was choice, only a couple blocks off Frederikstraat, ‘the Fred,’ with its fancy shops and nice cafés. Knowing myself, I realized that if I couldn’t just stumble out the door to find diversion, I’d never leave the apartment.

Goos had told me the rent—€550 a month—was a bargain—and I said yes at once and moved in the next evening.

  

On Monday, March 23, word came that the Bosnians had reaffirmed the referral of the investigation to the ICC. After eleven years, less one month, a criminal inquiry into the massacre at Barupra could begin.

I was not surprised that Roger, who knew all, called me late in the day.

“So I read you won your hearing.”

“It’s a little hard to claim victory, Rog, where there’s no one on the other side.”

“Whatever. Now that you’re investigating, how would you like to come to DC to have a conversation with Layton Merriwell?”

“General Merriwell?”

“He’s willing to talk to you one-on-one.”

“About the case?”

“No, about raising dwarf ponies. Of course about your case. He’s also been reading about it.” The Court’s order had produced the first publicity in the US about Barupra, a small article in the back pages of the New York Times. The paper had mentioned that the massacre had occurred in an area under US Army control. I could understand why that would have caught the attention of the NATO supreme commander at the time. “The general wants you to hear his point of view,” Rog said. “Tell you what he knows. Which is next to nothing.”

I nearly asked Roger what was in this for General Merriwell, but that was peering straight into the mouth of the gift horse. Instead, after hanging up, I sat at my desk trying to answer the question on my own. I didn’t doubt that Roger was my friend—he had flown fourteen hours to get to the funeral of my mother, who had cooked him countless meals during law school, and he was far more attentive to me than almost anyone else had been after I decided to leave Ellen. Yet he subscribed, like many guys, probably including me, to a view of friendship that barred no holds in competition. On the squash court, Roger had virtually maimed me through the years, running me over, driving the squash ball into my ass at 80 mph, and—usually when he was behind—swinging wide enough to strike me with his racket. All in the game, he’d say.

So I tried to fathom the game now. Roger was a public servant of the United States. Accordingly, whatever Layton Merriwell had to say was going to serve American interests, which, naturally, were in absolving US military forces.

I walked down the hall to Goos.

“Fair suck of the sav,” said Goos, which I took it meant he was as surprised as I about Merriwell. Goos’s English had basically been preserved in amber and was spoken as if he were still nineteen, the age when he left Australia.

The ICC’s protocols called for the prosecution of leaders rather than grunts who would claim they were just following orders. Therefore, if several hundred Roma had been massacred by American troops, General Merriwell would be our top target. Accordingly, his offer to speak to me contradicted what any good criminal lawyer—including me—would have told him, namely, Keep your mouth shut. The penitentiaries were full of guys who’d boosted their proclaimed innocence with lies that led them to the slammer.

“We can’t say no,” said Goos. In an investigation in which US law barred any cooperation from the American military, it would be impossible to refuse even one self-serving interview. “But,” he added, “this is going to make the old man very, very nervous.”

He was referring to Badu. The prosecutor, as well as the president of the Court—a judge who served as the chief executive—were chosen by the member countries, which meant Badu was best off avoiding controversies that might inflame any faction. The Pre-Trial Chamber’s order in my “Situation” had authorized the investigation to proceed only within the “territorial scope” of the OTP application, which naturally made no mention of the US. In fact, given the Service-Members’ Act, conducting an ICC investigation on US soil was probably illegal.

I called back Roger to make these points, but within twenty-four hours he had proposed that Merriwell and I meet in a conference room in the BiH Embassy in DC, which under international law was sovereign Bosnian territory. The Bosnians, like many others, revered Merriwell and would never deny him so simple a request.

With that, I scheduled a meeting with Badu and Akemi in hopes of gaining their approval. We sat in Badu’s corner office at a white conference table beside a wall of floor-length windows. Badu was at the head, while Akemi placed herself in the corner, with a legal pad. With her dark face always seemingly engraved by worry, Akemi was at the Court, with her door open, no matter how early I arrived or how late I left, usually scribbling like mad on the stacks of documents in front of her. Although she was my supervisor, my conversations with her were rare, since she was frugal with words and difficult to understand anyway. She spoke that Japanese version of English, cultivated at their universities, which is largely a dialect unto itself. Although Akemi’s office was only two doors down, I had taken to e-mailing her about virtually everything.

Badu was equally inscrutable for far different reasons. He was a large, amiable man, past seventy, hefty and bald, and a renowned authority on international law. He spoke beautiful, musical English and was composed and charming in his aloof way, clearly fit for the ceremonial aspect of his job, in which he received the diplomatic representatives of various nations. But beyond amiable chatter, virtually everything he said seemed to miss the point. He was the master of the grave nod or understanding chuckle, both of which he applied at deft intervals when his subordinates spoke. But he rarely responded directly to questions or suggestions. When I explained the possibility of seeing Merriwell, Badu kept repeating, “Very unusual, very unusual,” and then added his light laugh, without offering more.

It was widely assumed around the Court that most critical decisions within the OTP were actually made by Akemi. As an example, I was told that it was she who had finally pushed through the encrusted layers of resistance to investigating Barupra. But she was reluctant about me interviewing Merriwell. She agreed that a conversation with the general in the Bosnian Embassy was technically lawful, but she said the Court, whose expenses were annually audited by the UN, could never pay for an investigatory trip to the US.

Ordinarily, that would have been definitive. But for weeks, my ex–law partners had been nagging me to return to the Tri-Cities to discuss a criminal price-fixing investigation of Kindle County’s oil refiners, who for decades had charged the highest prices in the country. It took a few days, but my former clients confirmed that they would be only too happy to pay for the best seat on the plane. When I explained I could make the trip with no expense to the Court, Akemi had no way to refuse permission.

So I prepared to head home. There was also family business waiting for me. Not long after I’d announced my plans to move to The Hague, my younger son, Pete, and his girlfriend, Brandi, had come to tell me they were engaged. Ellen and I had tried to schedule a celebratory dinner with Brandi’s parents, but the Rosenbergs were still wintering in Florida when I left. Now I called my ex to see if we could make arrangements for Saturday night, April 11, which worked out. Roger, in the meantime, said Merriwell could see me at 3 p.m. on April 10, a couple of hours after I landed at Dulles.

The last step was to ask Esma to notify Ferko that we would need to see him in Barupra, where I would head from the US. She had called me a number of times in the interval, ostensibly to see what we had heard from the Bosnians. Because of the time difference with New York, we ended up connecting at the end of her court day, which was late at night in The Hague. Once we’d dealt with business, Esma inevitably prolonged the conversations with questions about my kids or stories about herself.

I especially enjoyed her anecdotes about growing up with four sibs in a motor home. She described her father as a con who preyed on the elderly, and a brute who beat his wife and children. Her revenge was to go to school wherever they camped. Because it was forbidden for Roma girls to associate with gadjos after puberty, her father had her expelled from the Gypsy nation when she went to university. She claimed not to have cared.

Interesting as Esma was, the perils with her remained obvious and I found myself trying to limit our phone calls to five minutes. This time I resorted to e-mail, but my cell rang moments later.

“Ferko will show you the grave, but he requires me to be there to accompany him,” she said.

It hadn’t dawned on me that she would make the trip, and my heart squirmed around for a second.

“There’s really no need,” I said, even though I realized she had every right to be there, if that’s what Ferko preferred.

“Bill,” she said, “I doubt you will see Ferko without my help. And he struggles with Serbo-Croatian. I can translate from Romany.”

I accepted her decision and took a second to explain that I’d be arriving from the US. In response to her usual curiosity, I outlined my plans.

“You and your ex-wife are comfortable at the same table?”

“Completely. Now that we’re no longer responsible for one another’s happiness, we get along swimmingly. I’m actually going to stay Saturday night with Ellen and her husband.”

“Dear me,” said Esma, which, truth told, reflected some of my own ambivalence about that detail. “You can tell me more in Tuzla. I shall see you Thursday week. The Blue Lamp?” Goos had already said the hotel was by a considerable margin the best choice in Tuzla.

After ringing off, I sat in my new office, drilled by a hard truth that broke through often in the wake of my conversations with Esma: I was lonely. Worse, approaching fifty-five, I remained unsettled in fundamental ways. I still approved of my choices in the last few months, but I’d made a large wager with my future—and my sense of who I was. Sitting there, I felt the cold void I’d stumble into if things didn’t turn out well.