Five days later, early Friday morning, I was reading the New York Times on my tablet while I stood in the kitchen, drinking coffee. As the lead news bloomed on-screen, I endured one of those instants when your vision throbs and your heart seems to cramp as you realize that the life you know and value has changed against your will.
An article on the lower left side of the page was headlined:
The United States is refusing to comply with a request by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for U.S. Army records being sought as part of an International Criminal Court investigation of the alleged massacre of 400 Roma in Bosnia in 2004. U.S. troops who were acting as NATO peacekeepers in the area are potential suspects in the case.
The U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court, and U.S. law bars American cooperation in the court’s investigations, but legal experts say that American treaty obligations seem to require the Army to surrender the records to NATO. The U.S. has refused to do so and has reportedly made vehement protests about NATO turning over records from the organization’s own files.
The situation is said to have caused serious tensions within NATO’s multinational Central Command in Belgium, and considerable consternation at the International Criminal Court, which has no formal means to enforce U.S. compliance.
In March, a survivor of the massacre testified before the court, which is situated in The Hague in the Netherlands, that in April 2004, 400 Roma in the Barupra refugee camp at the edge of a U.S. base were rounded up at gunpoint by masked soldiers and buried alive in the pit of a coal mine. The witness could not identify the soldiers’ military affiliation, but said they were not speaking Serbo-Croatian, the language of the local armies and paramilitaries.
The alleged massacre occurred within weeks of the death of four American soldiers and the wounding of eight others during a failed attempt to capture the refugee Bosnian Serb leader, Laza Kajevic. According to NATO sources, the Romas at Barupra were suspected of providing some of the equipment used by Kajevic’s forces.
The second half of the article quoted a former general in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps and two law professors, all of whom had been asked whether the Army could refuse to provide the records, given the conflicting mandates of the American Service-Members’ Protection Act on one hand, and on the other, the NATO treaty, the Dayton Accords, and the NATO Status of Forces Agreement. The former general called it a “close question, but one where the Army might not prevail,” while the two law professors believed that the treaty obligations clearly prevailed, especially with regard to records not stored in the US.
I read the piece several times. It claimed to be based on multiple sources, and it was especially notable that someone at NATO, given the chance, had taken the opportunity to piss on the Americans. But there were also details concerning the Court—that there was consternation regarding how to respond to the US refusal—that left me with a nauseating feeling about where the reporter had gotten her start.
My phone rang as I was pondering. The caller ID was blocked, which was not an encouraging sign.
“Well, aren’t you a clever motherfucker.” It was Roger. By my calculation, it was a little after midnight in DC, which meant the alarm had gone out at State when the Times was posted about an hour ago. Roger was the one who’d convinced his colleagues that I was a square guy who’d do it all by the book.
“It wasn’t me, Rog.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” he said. “You’re too smart for that, Boom. It was that tramp you think is your girlfriend.” A couple of words resounded: ‘tramp,’ of course, and especially ‘girlfriend.’ Why hadn’t I bothered to wonder if the CIA was going to follow me around? Or was it Esma they’d been tailing?
Roger had done a lot of work in an hour and called in some favors. No one at the Times would give up Esma’s name, but he’d wheedled enough out of somebody—probably three or four people—that he could triangulate his way to an answer. I had a litigator’s response to his harsh tone and was unwilling to concede anything.
“Read the article again,” I said. “I have no clue what’s going on at NATO in Brussels. So go wake up somebody else.”
“Fuck you. Don’t play that game with me. You know how this works. One person talks, then somebody else spills so they can spin things their way. But the daisy chain started with Little Miss Gypsy Hotpants. I’ve got that nailed down. And I know how she works. I’m sure the whole activist network is set to squeal—Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, along with various leftie congressmen who hate having to pretend that they respect the military. But let me tell you right now: You won’t succeed. I didn’t think you were this low, Boom.”
One thing trial lawyers get used to is fierce fights with close friends. When I was US Attorney, I watched countless former colleagues march to the door of my office in fury, indignant about my decisions regarding their clients. It was part of the job.
“Stop the high-and-mighty routine, Roger. I didn’t do it. And it would be nothing compared to the changes you ran on me. You sent me over here with about one percent of the information you actually had. Did you really think I’d miss all the evidence that points at the US troops?”
He took a second. “And why do you say that?”
“Rog, you’re not asking me to break any rules about the confidentiality of investigative information, are you?”
“Oh, go fuck yourself.”
“Let me ask you something. Is this the first time you’ve heard that the Roma at Barupra supplied some of the equipment Kajevic used when he killed those four soldiers?”
He was quiet.
“Anybody ever say to you, Rog, that the Roma had actually set up the Americans?”
“You’re full of shit,” said Roger and hung up.
I phoned Esma next.
“How dare you,” I said as soon as I heard her voice. “After all the bullshit you gave me that you were choosing me over your involvement in this case.”
“Bill?” she asked. I’d clearly woken her.
“You took advantage of my confidence and our bedroom.”
I could hear her breathing, weighing her options. Assuming she’d been sleeping, she couldn’t have read the article yet, and thus didn’t know how much of her role was betrayed by what had been printed.
“I did what you wanted but couldn’t do yourself,” she said finally.
I hung up on her.
I pedaled to work feeling like I was going to my beheading. The only positive note was discovering that I really didn’t want to lose this job, especially not in disgrace.
I was in my little white office no more than ten minutes when Goos came in and closed the door. He rolled his lips inward, trying not to smile. He was happy, but looked a little haggard. I took it that Thursday was a drinking night in The Hague.
“I’d call that a ripper piece of work, Boom,” he said. “Brilliant.”
“It might have been, Goos. But I didn’t do it.”
“Of course you didn’t,” he answered at once.
“No horse hockey. This may be my fault, but it wasn’t anything I intended to set in motion.”
He let his head weigh back and forth. He was accustomed to the world of the Court, where there was so little formal power that you took advantage of whatever you had. In the case in Sudan I’d been reviewing, the investigator had smoked out witnesses with a false leak, bought by the papers, that an insider was cooperating with us. But that tactic had been approved at the top.
“Well, I think this will work out rather well, despite that,” Goos said.
“If I keep my job.”
“Keep your job? Mate, you still have no idea how this place works.”
Within the hour, I was summoned to a meeting of the OTP executive committee. We sat around the corner table in Badu’s office beside the large windows. As we gathered, the old man was reading what appeared to be a printout of the net version of the article. He set it down when all of us had taken our seats.
“Do we half any idea how this o-ccurred?” Badu asked.
Octavia Bonfurts, a grandmotherly looking former diplomat, who was representing Complementarity today, spoke up before I could even clear my throat.
“This has Gautam’s DNA all over it,” said Octavia. “I checked the archive. This reporter did a profile of Gautam when she was appointed. Look at the heavy-handed portrait of the evidence against the Americans.”
Badu nodded gravely. As the discussion continued, I learned that Badu had felt obliged to advise the president of the Court, one of the judges who serves as the Court’s chief executive, about the document request to NATO. She, in turn, was likely to have informed the other two judges on the Court’s administrative committee, Judge Gautam being one. Furthermore, now that I considered Octavia’s remark, the brief précis of Ferko’s testimony did sound just like Gautam. As Roger said, leaking had a bandwagon effect: Once the story was coming out, everyone wanted to tell it his or her way.
Akemi, with her fright-wig hairdo and heavy glasses, was bent close to the page. As always, she was focused on the details.
“These Gypsies provided Kajevic equipment? What kind of equipment?”
I explained what we knew thus far about the trucks, and the motives both the Americans and Kajevic might have had for revenge in the aftermath of the shootout. Around the table, my colleagues made various approving gestures, intrigued and somewhat impressed by what we had discovered. I was so relieved about the way all this was unfolding that I wanted to hug everyone here.
We took a second to discuss the possible American responses to the article. They did not seem to have good alternatives, except thumbing their nose at the world, which was probably not worth it on what was from a global perspective a minor matter.
Badu laid his large hands on the papers in front of him, uttering that throaty chuckle.
“I would say,” he said then, “dis has worked out rudder well.”
As we adjourned, I suspected that a secret ballot would show that at least half the people in the room believed Badu was the source of the leak.
I had not seen Narawanda since the incident with Esma late Saturday night, and I realized that her scarceness was no accident. When I arrived from work on Friday, she was in her black Lycra outfit, wearing a knit stocking cap to ward off the fierce sea wind that had blown in this afternoon. I’d caught her again with one of her legs stretched on the back of the sofa. Every time I saw Nara getting ready to exercise, she looked like someone else. Today, with her hair completely covered, isolating her round umber face, she resembled a Buddhist nun. Her eyes hit the floor as soon as she saw me.
Half turned, she asked, in the especially stilted way she adopted when she was most uncomfortable, “Shall I await you?”
“Please.” I changed and was back in a minute. She had put on her gloves in the interval.
“Nara, I need to apologize to you again.”
“Oh no.” She shook her head with some force but was still too embarrassed to actually face me. “This is your home. You must do as you please here. If my head was not in the clouds, I would have given a call.”
We could go on with each of us blaming ourselves for quite some time. I raised my hands just to indicate it was a standoff. I started to stretch myself.
“She is the Roma advocate?” Nara asked. “When you gave me her name, I recognized it from the articles about your case I read online.”
I straightened up. There was a lot contained in that sentence. For one thing, I was surprised Nara had been curious enough about me to bother with any research. More to the point, however, was my concern that she understood Esma’s role in my case.
“Do you feel you should report me?”
Nara’s mouth parted. “For fucking?”
Narawanda’s word choice was often amusing, but this time I couldn’t stifle an outright laugh.
“For fucking someone involved in my case.”
Nara wobbled her head to show she didn’t get the point.
“I don’t know the rules of your Court completely, but at our Court she would have no official role right now. And besides, you don’t fully understand The Hague. So many people are away from home for long periods. There are always affairs and sneaking around. You would be surprised what gets ignored here.”
I wasn’t sure other people’s infractions did anything to cure mine, but I took her analysis as kindly. I also noticed how instinctively Nara became a defense lawyer.
“She is very handsome,” said Nara. “With an impressive physique.” This time that tiny ironic grin crept from the shadows for a second. “She has enchanted you?”
“She certainly had. Today I’m very put out with her—and with myself for not staying away.”
“Sex is very potent for men,” she said. “And willingness. A woman who radiates experience and confidence is very sexy, I think. No?”
“Yes,” I answered.
Her face darkened somewhat. “I was a virgin when I married. That was one vow to my mother I could not break. Now of course I regret that.” Her eyes again were aimed at the floor. Then she recovered and said we should run.
Nara’s remark about her virginity was not wholly shocking, since there really was never any anticipating what precisely was going to come out of her mouth. Nevertheless, as we took off, I was struck by her note of retrospective regret about her sexual history.
As we ran, I was happy I’d followed her example and worn a hat and gloves. The wind off the North Sea today was like an ice pick. Nonetheless, we kept up a good pace through the park for nearly an hour. Afterward, given the weather, we found a corner inside at a café on the Plein.
“So how was London?” I asked.
“Well, clearly not very good, if I was home a day early,” she answered. I didn’t know if she was annoyed at me for playing dumb, or simply irritated by the memory, but I explained, somewhat apologetically, that I’d had no idea why she was back early, and thought it might have been due to a change in Lew’s plans. That remark inspired a bitter smile.
“Well, his plans have changed in a way. Lewis asked me to find a job in New York.”
“Ah.” I said no more.
“We talked about that before we married. Now he acts as if all of those discussions do not count.”
“I’m sure he meant what he said when he said it, but it’s hard to be away from home,” I said. “I enjoy The Hague, but I would need to think hard about making a lifetime commitment.”
“He did think hard,” she answered. “And besides, how am I to find a position in the US? The job market for lawyers is still not very good. And I love my work here. If they ever capture Kajevic, and they will someday, I’ll join his private lawyer as senior counsel on his defense team. Mr. Bozic has already asked me.”
“I don’t think I’d count on them rounding up Kajevic, Nara. It’s been what, fifteen years?”
“Of course. My point is that I have more and more responsibility at the Court and I enjoy that.”
Having failed at my own marriage, I did not regard myself as an adept counselor, but she was clearly seeking consolation of some kind.
“People manage marriages in two cities.”
“Separated by an ocean? We decided together that we did not want a life apart.”
“Then you can trade off five-year blocks—five in New York, five here. I know couples who do that, too.”
She moved her head unhappily. Normally stoic, Nara was nearing the point of tears. Despite the frankness of our conversation, there remained some topics that were unapproachable and probably paining her, especially the question of children.
“It is not merely a matter of what or where,” she said. “It is the idea that he thinks he can make an announcement. Lewis has always been very self-sufficient. But he threatens me with that.”
Nara unfailingly described her husband as insular. My impression was that at the time they married, she found his remoteness a comfortable match for her own reticence, but that compact, and the size of their separate emotional spaces, was starting to trouble her.
I was sympathetic with the problem of having a spouse who felt unreachable at times. In some ways, Nara spoke about her marriage much as I might have talked about mine at the same stage, assuming I would ever have discussed it with the same guileless openness she did. In the long haul, the Logans’ relationship was probably not a good bet. But I would have been petrified if anyone had said as much to me, and I would have regarded the prediction as offensive. Perhaps, like Ellen and me, Nara and Lew would have kids and in that satisfaction mend much of the natural breach between them.
“Marriage is hard, Nara. It’s a little like Churchill’s remark about democracy. It’s a terrible idea, except for the alternatives. At least for most people.”
She’d had more than her usual one beer as the conversation had worn on, and once we were walking home, she reached up to give me a comradely pat on the back.
“You are a good friend to me, Boom. I am very grateful.”
The coverage of the skirmish between the US Defense Department and NATO continued throughout the following week. Because Bosnia was the first actual combat operation NATO had ever engaged in, many questions I would have thought were long resolved had to be decided for the first time. It turned out that most of the records of SFOR—as the Bosnian operation was known at NATO—or digital copies of them, were housed in the NATO archives in Belgium. Although it struck me as one of the idiotic ways the law finds to resolve difficult issues, the physical location of the files was central to the legal analysis, because the Service-Members’ Protection Act applied only within the US.
The political scrambling was also going full speed. The White House and the State Department were taking a different tone than DoD, since the story was not unspooling favorably for the US. References were appearing online to ‘a new My Lai,’ the massacre of five hundred Vietnamese villagers by US forces more than four decades ago, to which Merriwell had referred as a signal event of his days as a newly minted officer. In the ten-second world of broadcast news, the reports were framed as the US Army stonewalling questions our allies wanted answered. The journalists, who by professional bias despised bureaucratic secrecy, were piling on. Badu and Goos were correct: This was working out rather well. The publicity even seemed to light a fire under the Bosnians, who approved our return trip, which would now depend on the convenience of Madame Professor Tchitchikov.
Esma was calling me several times a day but I refused to pick up. Finally, she must have borrowed someone else’s phone.
“May I see you in person to discuss this?” she asked.
Her strategy was laughably transparent. Get me in a room and let the little head think for the big one.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Esma. Once burned, twice wise.”
“Oh please, Bill. Don’t be so fucking dramatic. It was a miscalculation on my part. I thought you would be overjoyed.”
“Esma, principle is clearly far less important to you than it is to me.”
“Bill, don’t condescend. We cannot hash this through on the phone. I can get to The Hague next weekend.”
“Don’t do that, Esma. You’ll be wasting your time.”
I hung up, albeit with more than a small pang. A part of me did not want to accept that this was over, particularly the tonic element Esma had added to my life.
On Friday, a week after our talk on the Plein, Nara announced that she’d taken a few days’ leave and was going to New York.
“That sounds like a smart idea,” I told her.
“I am not very sure of that,” she answered. “Lewis is brilliant about using many different words to say the same thing. He rarely changes his mind.”
“Then try changing yours a little. You’ll never regret giving this your best.”
She stood on tiptoe to deliver a fleeting half hug as she departed.
“Okay, asshole, this is how it’s going to be.” I was in my office at the Court about 3 p.m. the following Wednesday when my personal cell rang.
“Good day to you, too, Rog.”
“Let me tell you right now that if it was up to me, I’d tell you to fuck off. The whole thing with these records will be forgotten next week.”
I chose not to respond.
“The records,” he said, “all the records, will be provided to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander at the time of the alleged incident for his review.”
It took me a second. “Layton Merriwell?”
Rog cleared his throat. “I think that was the guy.”
“Okay, so the supreme commander, whatever his name was, gets the records. Then what?”
“If he chooses, he may meet with you on US soil. And if he gives you any records, that’s his choice, even though it will be a clear violation of the Service-Members’ Protection Act.”
I didn’t get it. “Merry and I get to share a prison cell?”
“There’s no criminal provision in that law, hotshot. And as you already know, Merriwell is in favor of opening the books on all of this. But if any American were to be prosecuted in the future on the basis of any of these documents, he or she could claim that the records were produced in violation of the act and therefore are not competent evidence in any court.”
It was a clever plan, aimed at reducing the risk that any American soldier could be prosecuted on the basis of these documents. I told Roger I’d need to run it up the flagpole here.
“You may as well just say yes now. Because it won’t get any better. You have twenty-four hours before this offer vanishes. The generals will get to someone in Congress by then. If you accept, the State Department, NATO, and the Court will each release their own statements that say the matter has been resolved and not one word more.”
Badu and Akemi agreed with me that this was a pretty good deal for us, assuming Merriwell would make a full breast of the documents. But since he was the one who’d suggested going to NATO in the first place, that seemed largely assured.
I called Rog back to go over a couple of nuances and then agreed.
“Deal,” I told him.
“Let the record reflect that I resent the shit out of this,” Roger said.
“So noted.”
Merriwell called the next day.
“So we meet again,” he said.
“It will be my pleasure. Are we back at the embassy?”
“No, no. We have to meet on American soil in order to preserve any future claim that the Service-Members’ Act has been violated. But the press has gotten interested in me again this week. Any chance we could get together at your house?”
“In Kindle County?” I was about to tell him I didn’t have a home there any longer, but I realized instantly how eager Ellen would be to make the guest house available for a matter that had been mentioned on the front page of the New York Times. And even the most intrepid reporter was unlikely to follow Merry to the Tri-Cities.
As I expected, Ellen was excited by Merriwell’s name, even though I apologized for being unable to explain much about why we were meeting. After comparing calendars, we all agreed that Merry and I would get together at Ellen and Howard’s the following Monday. To further complicate things, the French geologist announced she would be available next week for the only time in months. So I made plans to again ping-pong between the continents, going to the US first and then to Bosnia to meet the professor and Goos.