So we entered another period of waiting, not only for NATO to respond to our document request, but also for Complementarity to renew our credentials with the government of BiH so we could return, along with the French geologist. While our investigation hung fire, I was asked to assume a supervisory role on two other ‘situations’ that were in the last stages of investigation, both likely to lead to charges, one in Sudan, one in Congo. With a slow schedule, I took lunch as the occasion to get to know my colleagues, including a couple of the judges who were curious about me.
At night, several times a week, I spoke to Esma, who seemed to have become submerged in New York, twice putting off her anticipated return to the Continent. Her erotic texts continued to thrill and embarrass me, arriving unpredictably, as I was at my desk comparing witness statements or in meetings with the Complementarity folks about the latest communications with Brussels. At night, before I sleep, I hear the sounds you make, the unwilling little whinny of a groan as you finally succumb to pleasure.
After our first outing, Narawanda was willing to accept me as a running companion. Like me, she seemed to be going through a fallow time at work and we took off together at 5:30 or 6:00 most evenings. After the third or fourth time, I managed to keep up with her, although with considerable strain. I urged her not to let me hold her back, and she denied I was, but I tended to doubt it. She was a beautiful runner, with the bird-boned physique of the best long-distance athletes and a perfect gait in which her arm motion and neck angle were exquisitely synced with her stride for maximum efficiency. I, by contrast, was laboring with each step, but I enjoyed the challenge and was pleased that the vulnerable parts of a middle-aged body, especially my knees and lower back, had no complaints, whatever screaming my muscles did when I rolled out the next morning.
It became our routine, when we were done, to stop for something to eat, since the runs inevitably left me famished. Nara was the type who discovered her appetite only when there was food in front of her, at which point she would often consume more than I did. Generally, we stopped at one of the little cafés near the house, where we could sit outside without offending anyone with sweat still rivering off of us. We usually had a beer each and a large bottle of water, most often at a place that quickly became my favorite, a Netherlandish oddity, a fast-food restaurant serving fresh fish. Behind the glass counters, the huge variety of European catch was a pastel display on ice—anchovies, smoked mackerel, shrimp, mussels, calamari, various fish fillets like dorado, skewers of raw fish, and many styles of herring. A sign outside boasting of NIEUWE HARING had first brought us through the door, since it was a local delicacy Nara insisted I try. The herring, boned and partially gutted, was served with chopped onion, then consumed without silverware, simply by grasping the tail. My father had been a huge fan of herring, although he had never explained it was a Dutch habit, but the taste now brought back my childhood, when the pungent flavors were a challenge. Now, I found I could put down four or five herring at a sitting.
As for my landlady, I enjoyed her company as I got to know her. Nara turned out to be one of those people who was quiet largely because she never had quite figured out the right thing to say. Her remarks were inevitably slightly odd, frequently far more candid than her timid nature would seem to allow.
Her parents were both Indonesian. Her father was an engineer who’d worked for Shell and had risen high enough in the company to get dispatched to the Netherlands, where Nara had been raised. She was an art student in the early stages of her education, but her mother’s side had been caught up in the Indonesian unrest of the mid-’60s, when more than half a million suspected communist sympathizers were murdered by Suharto and the military, with another million imprisoned, including all of her mother’s brothers. Her mother’s grieving accounts of that period had ultimately inspired Nara to switch her studies to law, and to do the master’s degree that led to her employment at the Yugoslav Tribunal. She admitted she’d had an ulterior motive, though, for her graduate studies at NYU.
“I stayed in school so my mother didn’t marry me off,” she said one evening when we were outside at a stainless steel table. Without her heavy black glasses, Nara had a lighter, prettier look. “She was willing to allow me to finish my studies, but I was so glad when I met Lewis, since Mum already had someone in Jakarta picked out for me.”
“And how did your parents react to Lew?”
“Oh, as you might expect in a traditional Javanese family. My mother wrung her hands and said this was what had come of trying to make her children safe by leaving Indonesia. And of course, she was right: I am much more attached to Amsterdam and The Hague than Jakarta, which is really just a place where my grandparents live—and where I would never feel right drinking a beer with dinner.” Nara reached for her glass with a sly ironic smile, lips sealed and cheeks round, that I was seeing more and more often.
On May 3, the Court received a formal response from NATO. They had asked the United States to provide most of the documents we had sought, and the Defense Department, citing the Service-Members’ Protection Act, had refused.
I met with Akemi and Badu several times to discuss our options.
Legally, the American response was unpersuasive. Generally, in conflict-of-laws situations, treaties trump statutes, meaning that the US’s obligations under the North Atlantic treaty were paramount to the Service-Members’ Act. But it wasn’t clear what kind of appetite the NATO leadership had for a confrontation with their American partners.
“Gowen has been talking about a compromise of some kind,” Badu told me, when I reported back after a couple days of legal research.
I wasn’t satisfied with that. Compromise meant that the Americans would turn over documents that weren’t damaging, and only enough of them to give Brussels a way to save face. The Court had no rights of its own within NATO, nor did the Bosnians, in whose name we were acting, because neither of us were NATO members. Our only way to litigate was to bring an action in the International Court of Justice, where countries sue each other, in behalf of the Bosnians. That was bound to take years, and the Americans could be expected to pressure BiH to back out.
After several discussions, the OTP leaders decided I should send a long letter to the NATO countries that were also members of the Court, explaining the fallacies of the American position and the importance of defending principles of international law. Badu agreed to present the document in person to each of those nations’ ambassadors to The Hague. The hope was to bring more diplomatic pressure on the US, although no one seemed especially optimistic that the American position would change.
The second weekend in May, while this was playing out, Nara went off to meet Lew in London, where he’d been dispatched by his NGO for a few days. I thought of traveling there with her, since Esma had hopes of finally returning from New York. She remained uncertain about her plans, then at about 8 p.m. on Friday, Esma called to say that she was on her way to JFK and would come straight to me on a flight that would get her into Schiphol at 6 a.m. Saturday. I promised to meet her.
Our hotel in Leiden proved to be fully booked, as were a couple others I tried. Since Esma would have to return to London late on Sunday, I decided we could risk a stay at my place, which I knew Esma would prefer. I was feeling no less uneasy about the proprieties, but after two weeks apart, I was not expecting to spend much time outside.
Esma, and a porter with a mountain of suitcases, burst through the doors of international arrivals not long after six. She approached me languorously and fell into my arms.
“I have missed you so,” she whispered.
The Dutch, who were either more secure or more fatalistic, still had luggage storage within Schiphol, and Esma was able to drop her bags there. She retained only a small piece of hand luggage.
“Thinking I won’t need much,” she said, with a completely wanton look. As always, I tried to assay my feelings about Esma, since the sight and scent and feel of her remained electrifying. Granted, she was eccentric. But there was still something special going on. Sex at its best is a team sport and Esma and I together were all-stars. Between us, there was a level of trust and engagement and union that exceeded easy understanding.
“What in the world is this litigation in New York?” I asked her when we were on the train to The Hague.
“It’s a divorce proceeding,” she said, “if you must know. The other side is absolutely bonkers. The husband is busily attempting to establish adultery and inhuman treatment rather than consent to a no-fault divorce. It’s a bitter, dreadful case.”
“And what about your client?”
“Very fond of her actually. Iranian family, exiled with the Shah. She married another Persian, thirty years her senior, but they have slowly driven each other quite mad. It’s like watching one of those nature shows on telly, with two animals whose fangs are in each other’s throats, neither willing to let go and be the first to die. I met her in London many years ago, and she insisted I become involved in the case. She will be awarded a huge sum eventually, everyone knows that, but her husband wants her to earn it with pain.”
When we reached the apartment, Esma went through the entire place, including Narawanda’s bedroom, despite my protests about the intrusion.
“Very little sign of her husband in there,” Esma said, descending the stairs. “Only photos of the happy couple are down here, more or less for show, I’d say.”
“That’s the Dutch. Never open about emotions.”
“I thought you said she’s Indonesian.”
“Yes, but raised here, and more Dutch than anything else by now. They seemed to be having quite a good time when he was last here.” I told her about the knocking.
“Well, good for them,” said Esma. “We must follow their example.” She took my hand and led me to my bedroom. From her little bag, Esma produced a U-shaped object, purple and about three inches long. It was latex, and heavier than I expected when I touched it. I raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Have I disappointed you yet?” Esma asked, with a hooded look.
I had never had complaints about my sex life with Ellen. It might have been a little lackluster, but for a couple in their fifties we seemed to be doing far better than many friends who made allusions to fornication as an activity of the past like recreational drugs and singles tennis. After we separated, it had not taken much cruising on the Internet to figure out there was a lot I had not experienced. Some of it had no appeal; in other cases, I was curious about what so many people found fulfilling. But my explorations had advanced by several orders of magnitude after meeting Esma.
We lived Saturday in reverse. After we had amused ourselves at length, Esma fell into a drowse. She mumbled a bit and then disappeared into sleep mid-sentence. I had gotten up at 4:30 a.m. in order to collect her and napped myself, but I was awake again by 11 a.m. and crept down with my laptop to the living room, where I worked for a couple of hours, until Esma peeked cutely around the entrance. I brewed her coffee, then we made love on the sofa, despite my concern about spotting the furniture.
Afterward, I ran out to my fish place for food and bought a couple bottles of white wine on the way back. As we lay upstairs again later that night, Esma asked about the investigation. I told her that we had gotten some lab reports back from our trip to Bosnia.
“Any issues?” she asked.
I waved that off with an ambiguous gesture that did not connote any real worry.
“And what comes next?”
I answered that we were still awaiting what might be the big break in the case, the production of records.
“That could only be from the US Army.”
“I really shouldn’t say, Esma.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it’s confidential. The Court is a very formal place. Everything is secret. There are always rules.”
“And if you followed them strictly, we would not be lying here.”
She was right about that, even though I was perturbed to hear her acknowledge this only now, when it was convenient. On the other hand, the legal principles involved in the document request were not secret. I explained the concepts, without saying explicitly we had acted upon them.
“And the US is rebuffing NATO?”
“NATO doesn’t report to me. But that’s certainly my impression.”
“And no one can force the Americans to comply. Is that the point?”
“We could sue in the International Court of Justice. But the Bosnians probably wouldn’t support that. And even if they did, it would take another four to five years to get the records.”
“No other options?”
“None that I can think of.”
She propped herself up on her elbow and smiled disarmingly.
“The press can be very effective in this kind of situation, you know.”
“Badu and Akemi would have a fit. Leaking is not their style. I had to move heaven and earth to get them to do this in the first place.”
“You don’t need permission to leak, Bill. You need deniability.”
As US Attorney, I had been rigid with my staff about leaking. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure forbade any disclosure of grand jury matters, and I had no use for the idea that prosecutors should enforce the law by breaking it, no matter how effective it might be. I had to assume that the ICC’s Rules of Conduct for prosecutors were the same, although the truth was that I’d never bothered to look. I promised her that I’d undertake the research, but only so we could change the subject.
Around 3 a.m., I had come for the fourth time that day—as to Esma, there was no way to keep track, because she peaked so often—and she had padded down the stairs afterward to use the john. I was lolling ecstatically, amazed with myself, thinking without conclusions about Merriwell’s declaration that he might well do it all again, when I suddenly froze. I thought I had heard the front door slam. Nara was not due back until late on Sunday, at least sixteen hours from now, and I told myself that the sound must have come from the rear apartment. But I was still listening intently when I heard the distinct clack of high heels on the wooden floor of the living room. I searched my closet desperately for my robe and was still wrestling it on as I rushed down.
Just below me, a remarkable confrontation was occurring outside the bathroom door. Esma, who wore not a stitch, had used her hands as cover-ups, one sloshed across her breasts, the other over the female triangle. Nara and she were staring at one another, startled but also somehow unflinching. When I was still a few stairs away, Esma let her arms fall, in an act of what seemed both pride and defiance.
I dashed between them and, stupid as it was, made introductions. Esma smiled a bit at Narawanda, who was in a silk dress and hosiery and heels, but said not a word. I grabbed a bath towel out of the john and offered it to Esma, but she ignored me and turned to head slowly up the stairs, looking very good while she was at it.
“I didn’t realize you were having a guest,” Nara finally managed.
“I didn’t either when you left. She arrived unexpectedly this morning. I would have said something had I known.”
“Of course.”
“I was sure you said you wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow.” I looked at my watch. “Or today, I guess.”
“I did. My plans changed unexpectedly.”
“I should have called you. I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense. You live here. It is I who should be apologizing to you. I said I would be away.”
We looked at each other haplessly for a second, and then Nara picked up her small red suitcase, which had been behind her, and started up her side of the stairs.
Esma, still naked, was propped against the pillows in my bed, smiling subtly, when I arrived. She seemed quite pleased with herself.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“What did you say to her?”
Esma shook her head slowly. “Not a word. Neither of us spoke. We each knew who the other was. There was no need for introductions.”
Given my qualms about the proprieties, I had certainly not told Nara that I was seeing Esma, but I took it that Esma meant that the circumstances had led each to rather quickly appreciate the other’s position: the lover, the landlady.
“She had a fight with her husband?” Esma asked.
“She didn’t say that.”
“A woman arrives home at 3 a.m.? A woman who you’ve told me likes to be asleep by ten. She left London precipitously. Bill, really. I am constantly flabbergasted by how little you understand about my half of the species.” She smiled. “Come lay down. Let’s nap awhile and then make the bedposts knock before I must go.”